Truth Stranger than Fiction

We know that Rick's newest obsession interest is fishing, right? And we know that he's extremely delusional dramatic in his wild exaggerations stories, right?

Tuesday evening he went fishing at Surprise Lake with his new, best friend Dan. Yep, he and Dan loaded up the rotted chicken livers, putrefied hot dogs, and shrimp and sallied forth to slay the pez. Ever-positive Rickster, is sure that the BIG ONE is waiting for him at any outing.

Since it's honey warm here and the pond is well lighted, Rick and Dan were out way after my bedtime--9:30. I was just dozing off when  my cell phone warbled. There followed the excited chirping of Him Who Knows No Disappointment.

No fish, alas, but, "just wait til you hear what we saw!" shrieked into my slumberings.

"We saw a mannequin, penguin, fish-eating bird. He had a black pony tail coming out of the back of its head. It was awesome..." and on, and on, and on. For a good five minutes he mimicked the sound, the posture and movements of this creature. Once he got home he bounded into the bedroom. He  waddled, his head darted back and forth in a fish-getting jerk; he demonstrated how the ponytails swayed from the back of its head. He imitated its stealthy stillness. I rolled my eyes. I mocked sleepily.


So last night he made invited me go to aforementioned body of water armed with the new camera. We hiked around and through goose and duck poop; wet, scummy sand searching for the elusive fowl.

Twenty minutes later we'd questioned every fisher person and some walkers about this bird. They looked at us quizzically while Rick demonstrated the walk, the pony tails, the darting beak of this mysterious manifestation. They shook their heads. They rolled their eyes as we wended our way around the waters. No one had seen such a vision sight.

Of course, no bird was spotted.  Rick dejectedly returned home and Googled sea birds, heron, any number of other search words until he came up with the above specimen's picture.

"That's it! That's the one!" he shouted, "the black crowned night heron!"  Google confirmed it to his consciousness. He knows that's the ONE. Since it feeds at night, he suspects we were there too early. We must return later next time. He will capture photographic evidence of the feathered fisher.

Well, he can do it without this photographer. I could care less about the silly thing. I have "teacher neck" aka pain in my left shoulder; sciatica in my left hip/leg, and my skin is dry and chappy from the lack of humidity here in the desert. I won't waste my fine-tuned photographic skills on the bird of Rick's vivid hallucination imagination. Not me!