The Eyes Don't Always Have It . . .

Sometimes all I want to do is say "Look at that!"

Looking out the window Wednesday morning, I saw something way up in a big poplar tree overlooking the birdfeeder. I couldn't quite tell what it was but decided it must be Spotsford O. Possum and took a picture. I went back to my laptop, glancing up every few seconds to see if he was starting the climb down. 


And then he was gone. Possums don't move that fast, do they? I peered out the window, hoping he hadn't lost his grip and plummeted to the ground. No sign of a possum anywhere.


The mystery was solved when I downloaded the picture and cropped it.


A very big hawk -- probably keeping an eye on the buffet bird feeder.
 

And speaking of being fooled by what you see . . . 

There's this sign in a nearby town that always makes me do a double take. 

The first time I saw it, my mind went crazy -- "What? How can they possibly ..." 

And I had to turn around and go back and read the sign again.

Because what my eyes see is "Adultery Retreat." 
 

I am reminded of James Thurber's wonderful piece, "The Admiral on the Bicycle." Thurber, at this time, was almost blind without his glasses and he writes of a day when his glasses were being mended. He was being driven somewhere by a friend and, with his impaired vision,  he kept seeing strange things - a small striped cat rolling like a barrel across the street, an old lady with a parasol walking through a bus, an admiral in full dress uniform riding on a bicycle.

Thurber concludes: " With perfect vision, one is inextricably trapped in the workaday world, a prisoner of reality. . . For the hawk-eyed person life has none of those soft edges which for me blur into fantasy. The kingdom of the blind is a little like Oz, a little like Wonderland, a little like Poictesme. Anything you can think of, and a lot you would never think of, can happen there."

Like a roadside Adultery Retreat.