April 24, 2024
Catfished
In this day and age of technology, nobody was safe, not even if you lived in the woods. Google defined catfishing as “luring someone into a relationship with a fictional persona”. Today, I found out I got catfished, but more on that later.
I loved waking up on a weekday morning that I had off work. My wife and I drank hot lattes while I fidgeted with a dry morning cough. After we ingested the caffeinated goodness, we changed clothes and headed out the front door, walking to the main road. My wife packed some cat food in case we ran into Garbage, our favorite neighborhood cat. To our dismay, he was not out prowling in his usual hunting grounds, two enormous fields near the north end of the road.
When we arrived home from our walk, my wife made two fruit smoothies while I did the dishes and helped clean the kitchen. After guzzling down my breakfast, I went to the backyard to pick up dog poop. The morning was sunny with a cool breeze, perfect weather for being outdoors. Once I cleaned the yard, my wife sat down to study and I went to my office to write.
Today, we had plans to drive into Raleigh for a dental appointment. While in the city, we wanted to check out a small bookstore a few miles from the dentist’s office. The temperature still felt a little cold, but the weather had warmed. My wife and I grabbed our boots, put on some bug spray and headed out the front door for a morning walk through the woods.
We walked on the trails heading north toward the creek, hoping to find two impressive turtles we spotted yesterday. Walking stealthily, we neared the creek, and when we were about thirty yards from the bank, a large blue heron took flight. The enormous waterfowl was a muted blue and gray color and its long wings beat slowly as the bird flapped in large strokes. The heron flew west, circling back toward us and then flew north out of our view. We found no turtles.
When we arrived back at the house, I went back to finish my writing session. My wife later called me, telling me that lunch was ready, so I washed my hands and met her on the deck. We ate a delicious salad with homemade ranch dressing and fried chicken tenders. While we were eating, we solved a longstanding mystery we had investigated for years. Sven, the elusive Norwegian sounding bird, finally showed his face, and the revelation was both surprising, dumbfounding, and perhaps a little hurtful.
There was a bird we named Sven that had a very peculiar song that sounded like a Norwegian accent that went “ferde-ferde-ferde-ferde”. We heard this call last spring and summer, but never spotted the elusive bird. I did a lot of research on the internet, identifying local songbirds, but I never encountered an example of Sven’s song. Then, in late fall, the song disappeared, and the bird seemed to be gone with it. A few weeks ago, I heard the song for the first time this year, and we knew Sven was back.
We had been working hard to find Sven. We heard his song often and looked up in trees, but the bird never came near and we never saw what kind of bird it was. There were cardinals, wrens, finches, chickadees, and tufted titmice all around, but Sven continued to evade us. Then, a few days ago, my wife developed a crazy theory. She postulated Sven was actually a cardinal. Nonsense, I screamed, swiping all the papers off the desk in a rage. Okay, that didn’t actually happen, but this was no cardinal. I had watched cardinals on videos and studied them in person and I was very familiar with their song. But it was undeniable that the pitch and tone of Sven and the cardinal sounded alike.
Then it happened. Sven’s song sounded out today while we were on the deck eating lunch. The song was loud; close by. Sitting halfway down the bough of a large pine tree, we found Sven. We watched him intently, making sure the sound was coming from this bird, and it was clear the bird opened its orange beak and pushed air out of its lungs to the exact beat of the “ferde-ferde-ferde-ferde” song. I had so many questions. Sven was a male cardinal.
We saw the cardinals all year long. These birds were not migratory. Why did this specific song of the cardinal only appear in spring and summer? And why did they stop singing it in the colder months? Inquiring minds wanted to know. It was all a little shocking. Sven had been right under our noses the whole time. Last month, I even shot several photographs and videos of the same bird for which I had searched for so long. It was in that moment that I realized I had been catfished; by a bird.
The drive into Raleigh was interesting. While I had lived in several large cities, the sheer number of people and cars seemed alien. A part of me remembered the city environment and behavior. After all, I was a part of this lifestyle for most of my life. Yet, the memories of these experiences felt distant, very distant. They felt more like memories of a previous lifetime than something I used to take part in. These days, being back on the grid in a large city felt overly loud, busy, and abrasive.
We arrived at the dentist’s office, close to downtown Raleigh, about thirty minutes early. The office was closed to the public until our appointment time, so we waited in the car as my wife read a journal entry from a few months ago. It was fun to remember the details of a specific day. How quickly we forget all the brief moments life comprised. The dentist and her staff were very nice, and they showed their expertise. I was happy we found the Raleigh Comprehensive and Cosmetic Dentistry and I would recommend them to anyone in the area.
After getting the old chompers inspected and cleaned up, we visited a small bookstore in Raleigh named So And So Books. Just walking into the place, with its scent of fresh paper and book covers, gave me goosebumps. I read a lot, but I hadn’t stepped into a bookstore since before Covid. Although the place was small, I left with two field guides specific to North Carolina, one identifying trees, and the other, birds. I loved learning about the flora and fauna on the property, and I was excited to get detailed information about my area.
We drove back toward the house, stopping in Knightdale for some scotch guard for the outdoor cushions and ate lunch at Saltgrass. After being gone for several hours, we were ready to be back in the country. When we arrived home, the dogs were happy to see us, and I must say the feeling was mutual. After we gave the dogs some outdoor time, we needed to decompress by getting back out into the woods.
My boots kept snapping small twigs along the trail, causing my wife to turn back, giving me one of two looks. One face looked like I had given away our location to the enemy force while trying to escape from their prison camp. The other look was more of a mother looking at a small child asking, “Really?” We arrived at Beaver Tooth Rock and sat down. A large pileated woodpecker flew up into a tall dead tree in front of us, perfectly backlit by the setting sun. The bird thumped rapidly on the tree as if displaying its impressive skills and then flew off.
Near the creek, I spotted a turtle by a tree, just under the surface of the water. It dove out of sight once it detected our movement. I raised my hands repeatedly toward the water, and small fish would scatter, making the water roil. My wife laughed at me, muttering under her breath that I was so weird. I looked at her and we both laughed because we knew the truth. It took a weirdo to recognize a weirdo, and my wife was the king of weird. Oddly enough, she was also the king of cute. Spending time with my wife this evening took away the sting of being catfished by Sven, or whatever his real name was.