Saline Celtic Festival

For the first time in the seven years we've been here, my family went to the Saline Celtic Festival at local Mill Pond Park.

It was hot. It was _damned_ hot. It was too hot to think.

Yeah, LJ, I'm a bit sensitive about temperature. Go figure.

Anyway, it was fifty dollars- yikes- for four "adults" and one child to get in. Immediately we watched bulky males hammer-tossing, and then we went to a seperate area where a sheepdog demonstrated her herding prowess.

Wow, those border collies are _fast_. I can't help but wonder if hens could be managed in such a way. We only saw one dog at it; there were puppies tied in the shade and they got really excited, but they couldn't go anywhere. Lunge! Lunge! Lunge!

I felt kind of sorry for the sheep and collie both, though. If it was hot for a sweating human, how hot would it be to have wool or fur and no sweat glands?

Anyway, after the demonstration we went and got lemonade. It was so burningly hot that I didn't taste anything; my stomach was full, but all I noticed was that it was cooler than the air. And then we wandered around a bit, ended up near the bird of prey pavilion, right next to the river.

I'll tell what I remember while I still remember it.

There was a really big brown owl on a perch seperate from the rest. It had ear tufts and great glaring amber-gold eyes, so I can only assume that it was a Great Horned.

The others were closer together. I saw a redtailed hawk- it was bigger than I expected- a hawk that was near-black on top, paler on its belly, two kestrels, a larger falcon that may have been a peregrine but I can't tell, and one smallish bird off to the side that was hooded.

All of the birds except for the falcon- and I think of it as a peregrine only because the markings match- were on these circle-loop perches. Sort of like a tree branch. The peregrine was on a sort of circular stand. They all had jesses chained to their perches, so they couldn't fly off.

Now and again one of the people taking care of them and answering questiond would take a spray bottle and mist the birds individually. Most of them just tolerated this, but the peregrine opened its beak as if drinking and spread its wings. And the kestrels... they were funny. Both of the tiny birds bobbed their heads, opened their beaks, and splayed their feathers.

I think I liked the little kestrels best. They showed a bit more personality than that owl. I think he or she just wanted to sleep, but hey.

At any rate, not long after the kestrel-misting there was a commotion. One of the sheep had escaped the pen somehow and was running towards the river. A lot of people tried catching it, and all failed. They just weren't aggressive enough.

At any rate, they still scared the sheep enough that it went into the river, and swam to the bank at the other side. Then it just stayed there, up to its wooly shoulders in river water. That bank is woods; no trails or anything. And it doesn't really have a shore. Still, a kid in a red shirt crossed at a different point and started splashing after it. The sheep bleated planitively several times before dashing downstream a ways and scrambing ashore to be lost in the bushes.

After a time, the paramedics showed up. Paramedics! There was a man in a bright-red head-to-toe survival suit who forded the river, a rope attatched to his back, quite as if the sheep was a child of rich parents on the other bank of that Niagra Falls river.

Anyway, he crossed, clambered up, and began stumbling along searching. At one point I thought I saw ovine and human silhouettes in the tangled underbrush, but it might have been imaginary. Some time later, I heard the redsuit call to his team "I think I lost it!".

Now, what were the raptors doing during all of this? They were watching! I didn't quite see what the owl was doing, but the falcons and the hawk and the blackback all turned their heads and followed the scene, apparently with great interest. The blackback even tried several times to fly off in the commotion's general direction, but was brought up short by the jesses. Jink! Jink! Jink! Not unlike the collie pup.

I still don't know why nobody called in the herding dog. Maybe the paper will cover it. At any rate, it was almost as entertaining as Hazmat Day.