We did not have any of them before in the past, not when I was growing up and not even when I had grown much older and was working but out of the blue, they came. I am talking about those beautiful white egrets that flocked to the town by the droves and I must say they were a sight to behold. The big roundabouts in the town were at one time peppered with what looked like puffs of little white clouds. Nobody knew where they had migrated from and why they had decided to move here.
Unfortunately, I do not seem to see that many around these days. Maybe with the changing weather conditions or perhaps now that we no longer have regular floods like before and the roadside drains are at times rather dry, they have decided to move elsewhere. There were two of them though in the area where I stay – in fact, when my friend, Ivan, was in town, he was pleasantly surprised when they moved as we were driving past them. He thought they were those dummies – something like those horrendous pink flamingos that people put in their gardens for landscaping…and he too loved the sight of them – so pure and white, so elegant when in flight, gliding silently through the air.
Well, it so happened that I spotted one of them the other day. I don’t know what has happened to the other one for there seems to be just one of the two left. It was walking past the gate of a neighbour’s house and it saw its reflection in the tiles…
I noticed that it quickly went to the gate and looked behind the pillar for what it thought was another egret at the back. When it saw that there was no bird of its kind anywhere to be found, it went back to look at the reflection again…and lo and behold, the egret was still there. It repeated the action a few times and then it gave up and just stood there staring at its own image.
After some time, it decided to move on…
…and when it got to the front of the other pillar, there it was – the very elusive other egret!
It quickly went to check behind the pillar…
…and of course, there was nothing behind it.
It stood there for a long time, looking very sad and lonely. Perhaps, it was missing its partner and was looking for another friend. Unfortunately, it looked like it was looking for love in all the wrong places…
…and was looking in vain. Sigh!!! If it is companionship that it’s looking for, I certainly hope that it will find it some day, that poor thing!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 