Up at the church last week we decided to take the canoe out for a spin on Wolf Lake, a small lake nearby. As we pulled away from shore we spotted a common loon surfacing just ahead of us and marvelled at its beauty. Anyway, we worked our way around the shoreline, and about three quarters of the way around we spotted a Momma loon and her already-pretty-big chick. I know better than to get close to nesting birds, but we did get within decent binocular-viewing distance and all good looks at them. She seemed pretty unpurturbed until all of a sudden she gave a loud whistle and dove, followed by Baby. How cute, we thought. Meanwhile Dad was away across the lake, we could see him swimming around on the other side.
So we paddled on, exploring the shoreline and chatting about how long loons could hold their breath underwater, and how many chicks they had a year, and whether muskies ate them. Suddenly, just to the stern there was a loud splash and a squawk. I whirled my head around, but saw only ripples on the water.
"What the heck was that?" I said. "A fish wouldn't have made a noise like that, would it?"
Paddled on. This time in the bow, so we saw him. The loon shot straight out of the water, screamed "Loolooloo!" (like Xena!) and dove back down. Okay, now we knew he was unhappy, so I steered the boat away from shore and we started paddling a little harder. This time when he came up it was not a foot away from the canoe, right beside my sister, who promptly dropped her paddle into the boat to shield her face and screamed.
"What the *!#@ are you doing?" I yelled, my voice starting to crack. "Start paddling! Hard! We need to get out of here!"
He came up once more, and stayed up this time. He did a very impressive dance on the water, showing us how big and strong he was, how massive his wingspan, how flexible his neck and sharp his beak. At some point the canoe crossed over an invisible line and he settled down, and we relaxed a little to and watched him for a bit while catching our breath.
I had *NO IDEA* loons could be that agressive. Morever, I had no idea that when they did get agressive, they could be that *SCARY*. He came up so fast and strong that I was sure if he hit the boat we'd tip. Thank God we thought better about bringing the dog with us. And I kept thinking about something someone told me they saw on TV about loons impaling Canada Geese from below when they get tired of sharing the lake. My experience with loons has always been that if you get too close they just dive and swim away. While we purposely didn't approach Momma and Junior, I think our mission to explore the shoreline may have brought us between them and their nest, and that's why she called for backup. Anyway, I don't think I'll ever look at loons the same way again. They are much bigger and pointier from two feet away when they're trying to kill you.
I'm totally off one-dollar coins,
Julia
