What a wonderful thing, to look up yesterday afternoon and see an eagle soaring above our town home! We live just across the state highway from the Mississippi River, where eagles nest along the wooded shoreline areas, so every now and again—if you watch at the right moment—you can see one of these majestic birds floating effortlessly on the air currents with his wings outspread. This one looked luminous, with the rays of afternoon sunshine glowing on his underside.

Now, just as a contrast, we also have a wild jake (young male) turkey in our town home complex! We had a pair of turkeys last spring while we were remodeling, before we moved in, but now we seem to have this one young fellow darting from patio to patio to eat the birdseed that drops from the feeders hanging from many decks above. My husband thinks he got banished from the flock for doing some adolescent male thing the other turkeys didn’t like. My sister has named him Sidney, and he occasionally waddles up, poking the air with his beak as he walks, and gazes in through the sliding glass doors at us. Sue leaves her cigarettes and ashtray out there on the patio table, and I keep waiting to see Sidney go off with a lit cig in his beak.

So it makes me ask myself, as I contemplate these two so-different bird personalities: am I acting like an eagle today, regal and soaring and fully aware of how magnificent I am? Or am I being a turkey, lurking under decks and then sprinting, ungainly and dorky, from one feeder to the next? While each bird was created to fulfill his place and purpose—just as we all are—maybe it would be a good thing to emulate the more glorious bird every chance we get!