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Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | A BIG part of my Jet Boats charm that I use to run guided trips on the local rivers, is that I can both launch and traverse on waters on the very shallow side. This perk has not gone un-noticed by both charter clients for fishing opportunities and professionals wishing to get both technical and functional work done on some of our local (low water) rivers for one reason or another.
I did some work for Dow Corning this spring up and down the Tittabawassee, was paid a good wage for doing so, and got to preview just how many walleyes were left in the spring river system without any DNR hassels for being on the river, (which for the most part) is totally of limits during that particular post spawn timeframe. Well, I got another job from a film company today making a Promo Movie for Dow, and met the camera crew at the launch at 8:00am. But before I continue, let me tell you what happened at the launch before they arrived.
I was loading my gear in the boat, when from out of nowhere, a young Starling/Black Bird landed on my left shoulder. It startled me and we simply looked at each other two inches away, eye to eye for a second. Then when I went to shoo him away with my right hand, he jumps on it and stay perched there looking at me. So I put him back on my right shoulder where he stays for about 1 minute as I get the rest of my stuff out of the truck. I thought he might be injured, but he then jumps down in the grass at my feet, and catches himself 2 crickets and eats them. He then flies up and sets on the side of my boat as I back it down the ramp. He finally dissapeared when I pushed the boat off the trailer. This may have been the strangest thing I've ever experienced in my life, having to do with any wild animal.
So we launch, get upstream and the film crew starts taking pictures of the river in general and some of the wildlife on it. But it seems the official word that we were going to be filming around the Dow property, didn't get passed through the proper channels. We soon found ourselves being observed by not less than 5 Dow security vehicles and being hailed on load speakers to pull to the rivers edge for interrogating. So the 9-11 mentality is alive and well at the Dow facility, and I'm not that upset that it is. Anyway, I take the skin divers on the river tomorrow. Can't wait to see what that might bring. Hope there hasn't been any local missing persons reported. 
Edited by walleye express 8/23/2004 1:32 PM
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| hehehe. Good story on the balckbird, WE. While deer huntin, I often had Nuthatches land on the bill of my cap. I'd see their toes curled down under the front, and then there they'd be, hanging upside down from the bill, staring me in an eyeball! | |
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Location: Milw, WI | Dan,
Your getting to slow and he thought you were a statue.
He was going to do a pigeon dump job.
Had to see if you were awake.
LOL....
Ok...Ok
It is so cool when nature excepts you as one of there own.
Peace My Man. | |
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Member
Posts: 2680
Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | Rich.
For a while, I thought about the mystical/black magic connections and implications that this might have. I mean, it wasn't some sort of a beautiful song bird or butterfly that landed on my shoulder. If I was more suspersticious, I may have called off the whole deal right then and there. Then when the Dow Cops were ready to open fire, I had another bad gut feeling. You can bet I'll be extra careful tomorrow on the river.  | |
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Member
Posts: 540
Location: Milw, WI | Bring some pop corn (popped), or a little baggy of sunflower seeds.
And pay a little amage in case you spirt gardian stops to visit you again.
On the lighter side at least it was not a buzzard.
Or the black cloud that sits over my head.
I have been at the gun point before from the US coast guard.
3 guys in a rubber boat 2 pointing m-16s the other a 45 and a blow horn.
Telling us to get of the break water.
Problem was it was 5-8 footers and we were in a 12 foot canoe.
Being told to rist my life by them also, not a neat feeling. | |
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Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | Rich.
Trust my spooky wife to give me the willys about this (blackbird) episode. She says it was either my dead Father or Grandfather checking up on me in the form of a bird. I would usually dismiss that as humbug, but the whole thing was just so very strange.
Now she's got me afraid to answer the phone, in case a close relative died this morning and paid me a visit before heading to the after world.
Edited by walleye express 8/23/2004 6:40 PM
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| I think your wife was right Cuz. It must have been Grandpa Rubin or our Great-Grand dad keeping tab's on us. I've had that feeling come over me more than once while hunting or fishing. Like one day, I was hunting a spot where as a kid I'd taken my very first rabbit. Your Grandpa was with us when I did it, in fact he pointed the rabbit out to me before I got it.
The last time I was there, I stopped and sat down with my Lab to take a break. Low and behold a Bald Eagle lands in a tree next to where we were sitting and stayed for app. 10 min.. When he took off, He made a pass over a small clump of switch grass along a ditch near by. When we started walking again, My Storm dog went into the clump of grass and out comes the biggest rooster I'd seen in a long time. I thought Rubin was with me again telling what path to take. It must be the Indian in us. C-Ya. | |
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Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay. | I think your wife was right Cuz. It must have been Grandpa Rubin or our Great-Grand dad keeping tab's on us.
Rick.
Now that I can almost believe. It always seemed to me, that Grandpa LaCourse always had mystic like powers when it came to finding game and fish. He told me once that it was a snapping turtle stripping the flesh and hide off my muscrats that I was catching close to their huts. "In January?" "Ya, Right".. I always assumed it was a mink or weasel finding them in the run after they were trapped.
Anyway, He went with me one day when I had this happen again, and we chopped a large hole in the ice around the set and the rat that had been ruined. I had left the rat in the trap overnight, and set other traps near it to possibly catch what I thought was the mink or weasel doing the damage. So Grandpa pokes around in the mud with the axe handle until he hears this tell-tale (shell-like thud). "Wulp, there his is" he announced. "Dig him out of there" he tells me. And sure enough, waiting there in the mud for mine, then his, next victim was about an 18 pound snapper. Only took him about 10 minutes to turn to a solid brick of ice after I threw him out of the hole he was in onto the ice. This had been happening occasionally to me for almost the entire 20 years that I had trapped rats. And every other trapper I had discussed this delemma with, all assumed it was a mink or weasel doing the damage.
Grandpa Rubin was indeed a wise old bird. Maybe even a Black Bird hey?
Edited by walleye express 8/25/2004 8:02 AM
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Member
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| Dan,
I don't suggest you wear that black stocking over your head and face like you did when we were fishing the coffer dam this spring. Seeing you wearing that and skin divers swimming up to the Dow plant might not be a good thing for some security gaurd to misinterpet! | |
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Capt: Dans Weird Day on the River.