My mother-in-law is an avid American Bald Eagle watcher and advocate. This week she got to help her local family of eagles. Here’s her story in her words and pictures:

Our local nest, the Jackson Bay nest, broke this morning.  The 3 babies are 6 to 8 weeks old and all 3 survived the fall.  They were examined by Sutton Center staff and declared healthy.  An ad hoc crew of eagle lovers worked diligently to build a new nest this evening.  As you can see from my pics, the old nest is not usable.

The new nest is a pallet, some lumber from our shop, twigs from the old nest and the grass-mulch from the old nest.

The 3 babies (2 males 1 female) were reinstalled in the new nest about dark this evening. A maggoty fish was moved from the old nest to the new nest. The babies were docile and about 5 pounds each. They would have been coyote food tonight if they had remained on the ground. Parents were circling overhead while we worked.

This was one of the most exciting projects I have been involved with in a while. I will keep you posted on this project.  The Sutton Center folks said the parents will be back, probably tonight.

Go Mom!

I was talking with some other parents one day and we got onto the subject of  “when we started to do our own laundry”. It was amusing to hear the answers range from “I did my own in High School because mom went back to work full time and it was that or go stinky” (me) to “I still don’t do my own” (lucky guy). One couple piped up that they knew a family that made their grade schoolers do their own laundry. I went home that very night and announced that my then-8 yr-old was going to start doing his.

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I have been blessed with the opportunity to hang out with some amazing parents. This in itself is probably the best wisdom for any mom: Hang out with other Moms! In my case, a singular soundbite has founded much of my parenting thinking for the past several years. A friend at a table discussion shared a soundbite from a news article she’d recently read. Something along the lines of:

“We live in an era where parents believe their children are brilliant geniuses, but give them no responsibility.”

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