Michael Price writes -

>Hi Tweeters

>I was walking home fairly late from work Hallowe'en night and was
>within a few hundred feet of my house in Vancouver's Kitsilano district
>when a distant, odd noise turned my ear-radar on. A minute or so later,
>eight Trumpeter Swans came sweeping in low over the trees and houses,
>eight *big* white ghosts catching the streetlights on their underwings.
>They flew out of the southwest and as soon as they went over the south
>shoreline of Burrard Inlet, they headed straight north. They limited
>their calling to a few muted, French horn-like mellow barks quite
>unlike the full-throat baying, yapping, and blatting I'm used to
>hearing from these birds on their wintering fields.

Trumpeters have been back here in P.G. for about two weeks now.

>How incongrous, I thought, what with firecrackers and screamers being
>lit off everywhere, and kostumed kidz dragging their parents around on
>every block in sort of a reverse March of Dimes for Tooth Decay, and
>then I thought, what the heck, it's Hallowe'en and great white
>ooglyboogly Things are *supposed* to carom around at night making
>unearthly noises.

>So that got me wondering, it being Hallowe'en, how many ghost legends
>originated from people's naive observations of nocturnal migrant
>swans, and if other myths have a similarly innocuous seasonal origin.
>Having seen this sight and being able to put it into an ornithological
>context is one thing (okay, to put you poor aesthetes out there out of
>your misery, it was *also* an immensely and spookily beautiful,
>soul-stirring, sight as well), but I can also understand that to see it
>when wrapped in stultifying and terrifying superstition must have
>incited more than one far-from-home woodchopper or traveller to promise
>his mother's soul (if he's from a culture where it's said that the old
>dear hangs about after death) that he'll change the flowers on her
>grave *much* more frequently from then on.

>At the same time such a person would likely know empirically what
>these things were, as most men and women who spend a lot of time out of
>doors tend to be pretty observant, though they could simultaneously
>believe something totally contradictory. As our own current political
>and religious mythologies starkly show, we likewise can put a *lot* of
>distance between what we believe and what we know to be true. Any
>science (such as ornithology--just to name a randomly-chosen example
>;-) is the process of narrowing that distance.

Indeed.

>A reminder of that was the treat the swans gave; the trick is in the
>angle of perception. Happy Hallowe'en.

A belated Happy Hallowe'en to you, too, Michael. May I just say that
this is one Tweet who is real glad you are back contributing to this
list. And in as good of form as always.

cheers,
Jack




Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
CANADA
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca