Vacation Icebreaker

TripPix.

About ten years ago I ordered a Minnesota Vikings shell jacket offered free with a subscription to Sports Illustrated. I wore the jacket so much that the zipper was shot in a couple of years. Fortunately, Sports Illustrated had another promotion and I somehow ended up with two more jackets. When we travel, I leave one in the vehicle and the other in our hotel room or condo.

It's perfect because it's light enough to roll up in my purse, and yet it keeps me warm on a windy day. Perfect for bicycling or a walk on a chilly spring day.

Its best attribute is its use as an icebreaker. Wherever I go, people strike up a conversation, sometimes about the Vikings or other Minnesota sports teams, sometimes about Minnesota in general -- or any other topic.

Other Minnesotans smile at me on elevators or in the street. Wisconsin fans of the Green Bay Packers hurl a friendly insult. Everybody smiles.

Pelicans, Herons and Egrets



Pelicans on the  dock

Great egret waiting for a handout

TripPix.

We have pelicans, herons and egrets in Minnesota, but they're not nearly as common as they are here in Florida, and of course they're very seasonal residents of the north country. I can't get enough of them here!

TripPix.

The other day, we met a young man in Gulfport who told us he loves all the birds on the Gulf Coast. As a fisherman, he regularly pulls in one of the shore birds on his line, and often spends many hours pulling hooks caught in the birds' backs and untangling fishing line, his own and older line that sometimes wraps itself around their neck or legs. I have a new admiration for people who do this -- and I've seen disentangling work quite often. A few years ago, my sister Marilyn helped a fisherman performing such a task.

This afternoon I watched a couple of commercial fishermen fillet fish at one of the docks in Blind Pass. The guys threw skin, tails and guts to the pelicans swimming close together in the area below the dock, each greedily jumping at the treats and even attempting to grab food out of one another's long beaks.

A snowy egret sat quietly to the right of one of the fishermen, waiting for special handouts, regularly thrown to him. He was clearly a favorite, and it seemed that the egret actually got fillets, not just scraps. One was so large that the bird had trouble swallowing the big chunk of fish.

These beautiful birds seem so vulnerable to environmental messes created by humans, but today I felt hopeful and certain that much is right with the world.