I got interested in birds because, like every primitive human since cave days, I saw them flying and wanted to do that myself.

After a while, I knew one kind from another. I went to the woods, rivers, fields and beaches. Looking up.

It was a great way to get away from the mess that is the human world. Hiking, wilderness walking, bird watching, animal watching, all that, became a habit.

If it involved mud, strenuous exercise, and the kind of two-fisted adventure that made me read books about Henry Morton Stanley, well…cool.

Recently, there was a story in the news about a dog from North Smithfield, Alabama who had a two-fisted adventure. It involved flying.

This dog, Mason, was picked up by a tornado that destroyed the family home, and he was carried away.

If I’d been bird watching in a nearby county, maybe looking for an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, I might’ve seen this dog fly overhead.

Yeah, if I was looking for an extinct woodpecker, or following a common Turkey Vulture, I might have seen Mason in the sky.

He crash-landed somewhere. Might have been a hundred miles away, and limped home.

Weeks later, when his owners returned to sift through the rubble, they found Mason sitting on what was left of their porch.

Starving, and with two badly broken legs, he smiled up at them and feebly wagged his tail. Vets used screws and braces in a 3-hour operation. Now, Mason’s walking again.

That’s a two fisted dog. A dog that flew. A dog to remember.

Another dog to remember is the spunky little guy named Dante, my next-door neighbor until recently. We don’t have a picture of Mason, but we do have Dante. He’s the one on the right.

Like the kids’ movie title says, “All dogs go to heaven.” But some come back.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep bird watching.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 at 9:58 pm and is filed under "Daily Sightings" A Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.