[mou] sloggy resolution for growl

[Thomas Maiello]

Decided that it was now or never to find out about the growl in the  
marsh.  Was a bit tentative as the sound was not a croak - no  
epiglottal vibration by air sack percussive gutteral throat clearing  
croak - but a more resonant combination of post syrinxial cavitation  
with protective intent.  So I put on my old mud wader shoes - really,  
really old sneakers whose loss would not be noticed or cared about and  
took off towards the sound.  It came from deep within the cat tails  
across the great divide of terra firma to terra muck to terra aquatica  
and on to terra unknown and hoping no deep holes.  I waded it as  
silently as I could to stalk the wild growler and actually picked up  
stealth mode pretty quickly thanks to the surrendering muck which  
could take a dry cat tail whole and muffle any crack, snap or pop such  
a dried appliance could muster.  I crept in through several screens of  
cat tails and finally got the bejezus scared out of me as a Great  
Egret had the bejezus scared out of it when it realized something  
different that way came.  The bird was actually, or my imagination  
made up that it was down on folded legs doing I don't know what.   
After filling the sky with white and yellow-black spear-like bill and  
scare-crow legs and almost scaring me into an embarassing condition,  
the bird was gone and in its wake was a flattened area of cat tails  
with miscellaneous white feathers here and there along a finger of  
lake that reached into the stalked beds, .  Was it some kind of Great  
Egret siesta pad or an easy egret real meal deal with the open water  
so close?  Don't know.  I do know that this bird, or one just like it  
had been competing with a Great Blue Heron along the same stretch of  
cat tail marsh and I had witnessed several loud and aggressive  
encounters between them.  I can only make up that something has  
meaning here but the cat is out of the cat tail bag as far as I know.   
The growler, to my best understanding, soggy jeans and shoes and  
blackened legs and stupidly worn white socks, was a Great Egret.

That is my story and I and I am sticking to it.



Thomas Maiello
Angel Environmental Management, Inc.
Maple Grove, MN