Geese, an Eagle, and a Great Library

While walking the dog on Monday morning, I traced a persistent honking sound to a lone Canada goose.  Which was standing on the pitched roof of a two-story house.  This is strange enough that I stopped a bit to look.  As I watched, a second goose joined the first one, stretched out its long neck, and appeared to hand off something from its bill to the bill of the first one.  My guess would be a foodstuff, as nesting material would have been more visible.

     Home again, I called our friend Don to see if he knew what those geese were doing and why they were doing whatever it was up there.  Were they courting?  In the middle of February?   Don didn’t know, but felt courting was a possibility.  “It’s been an odd winter,” he said, and there’s no arguing with that.  It was sixty degrees here a couple days ago.  “Maybe spring will be sooner than we think.  Animals tend to know these things.”

     As long as I had Don on the phone, I told him what else I’d seen that morning:  three crows mobbing an eagle.  The eagle hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about its pursuers, or the additional crows flying in to help the first three, but it did continue on its way.  Don, it turns out, has been enjoying eagles on his horse farm.  He and Kathy regularly see a pair of adults and three juveniles.

     “They’re so big,” he said.  “When they land in a tree, it looks like a horse landing in a tree.  I can see their yellow beaks from three hundred yards.”  He hopes the juveniles will stay and nest in the area when they reach maturity, so that he and Kathy will be able to watch generations of the birds.

     Tuesday morning, I texted Don to tell him I’d seen three Canada geese on top of a flat-roofed office building.  He responded, “Don’t know.  Probably warm up there from the sun.”  Which seems as good an answer as any.

     Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown branch was a seriously happenin’ place last Sunday, for a Fiber Arts Expo.  I happily joined the swarm of folks checking out the vendors and demonstrations on the first floor, where you could learn about and stock up on supplies for spinning, knitting, felting, crocheting, weaving, quilting, and more.  There was so much color in that sunny area that your eyes felt like they were at a party.

     Someone recently donated a floor loom to the library, and a volunteer from the Fiber Arts Guild was on hand to show folks how it worked and to offer us turns.  I tried it.  It was so much fun.  Elsewhere, a weaver demonstrated a table loom.  A vendor offered inkle looms for sale—quite small looms used mostly to make straps and belts and other long narrow weavings. 

     The time I could go to the expo precluded my attending any talks, but I heard reports that they were good.  I did stop downstairs to look in on the workshops taking place down there.  The one in the Secret Lab was full—not an empty chair in the room.  But the one in the Multi-Purpose Room had two empty chairs.  I slid into one, and the woman behind me took the other.  Lucky us.  We had a great time.  All of the expo activities were free of charge and open to all comers.

     Furthermore, my friends Cindy and Allie invited me to go with them to another workshop at the library later in the week.  This one was for making wooden coasters using a laser cutter.  All of us designed our coasters on laptop computers provided by the library.  Staff came around and collected our designs on a flash drive.  The flash drive told the laser cutter what to do.

     The best part of the workshop was watching the laser cutter work.  That night, it was a laser-controlled, exceedingly precise, wood-burning mechanism.  Tiny sparks appeared on the wood as the machine cut.  Etched designs appeared, and the machine cut circles around them to turn them into coasters.  The finished products were remarkable.  Against another wall of the room, a three-D printer was working away on a part for a custom keyboard a patron had designed.

     I love living in a place with such a wonderful library.  Library Journal has awarded it five stars for fifteen years in a row.  I also cherish being able to walk a mile or two from home to see oddball geese sitting on roofs, and a bald eagle flying low.  And having friends who care about these things, too.

17 February 2023