Edit:  This was supposed to post yesterday, but apparently you are supposed to pay for your website URL, every year, or they shut it down. Whoops.

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Facebook just reminded me of something.  On this day, back in 2009, I had just passed the LAPD physical…. not by the skin of my teeth, but by the literal skin of my face.

 

It was an accident that should never have happened.  I shouldn’t have started the application process to become a police officer as soon as I had – the DragonMonkey was only 6 months old, and because of my C-section I’d had to wait two months to even begin any real exercise.  I’d been hitting it hard – getting up early in the morning to run, attending CAP physical fitness programs a couple of times a week….

Still – I knew I wasn’t quite ready.  It’s just….  thought I could force myself through it.  After all, it was a numbers game.  You had to pass the physical portion of testing to even begin backgrounds, and backgrounds at the LAPD took a notoriously long time, sometimes up to a year.  Plus, there was no telling when the next academy would even be, even if I was accepted. A best case scenario would give me an additional 6 months to whip myself into shape.  A more realistic timeline would give me 9-12 months… maybe even closer to a year and a half.   I figured if I could just push through the easy treadmill portion I could continue with my fitness regime and by the time I was through backgrounds and accepted into the next academy, I’d be physically ready as well.

The test was harder than I thought it was going to be.  The treadmill was narrow and had no handrails, which made me feel surprisingly dizzy – I am not afraid of heights, but something about the lack of handrails gave me an odd sense of vertigo.  The test itself wasn’t very long.  They had it timed just right to simulate the effect of running 3 miles at a 9 min/mile pace, starting off at a walk and slowly increasing inclination and speed until the final minute was spent at a near sprint at 45 degrees of inclination.

Still, I figured I could do anything for 10 minutes, and I was right.  I passed, and the treadmill turned off…. And in that instant I stepped wrong, tripped, stumbled, and my legs fell out from underneath me.

Falling on that treadmill was like one of those viral videos.  I pitched forward, and then in a last-ditch effort not to fall flat on my face I threw myself backwards, and I ended up falling on my side.  The treadmill was still booking along at a pretty good pace, so it immediately flung me backwards into the wall behind it, where I crumpled, wedged into the space between the treadmill and the wall.  I lay there, panting for breath, my chin bouncing on the still-running belt, scraping the skin off of it.

By the time I managed to pry myself out of there I was too horrified to accept a Band-Aid. Not only did I not want to draw attention to it the stupidity of my injury with a giant Band-Aid (I didn’t realize the injury was as visible as it was), but I also didn’t want to give the person any time to reconsider handing me the “passed” certificate.  I thanked him and grabbed that certificate and went to get changed for the next portion – the questionnaire.

Eleanor Roosevelt may have said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

You know what?

I bet you Eleanor Roosevelt never headed into police candidate testing, the only woman in a room full of chiseled young men, her chin bleeding all over a button-up lavender shirt that was snugly buttoned over too-large nursing boobies.

I threw back my shoulders and pretended I belonged, but I still felt like a poser.

Still, scraped chin or not, I was hopeful.  I could just see myself as a police officer, so clearly. I’d always been interested in law enforcement.  I’d been a part of a police and fire cadet problem in high school and had thoroughly enjoyed my time on every ride along I had during my time with 911 Dispatching. Sure, I’d left that field to go back to school to purse a degree in the medical field, but now that life, a baby, and finances had gotten in the way of that, a career in law enforcement seemed like the perfect fit.

Spoiler alert:  I totally didn’t become a police officer.  I failed on backgrounds, and by the time I could reapply, the dragon of my rheumatoid arthritis had woken back up from its slumber and made me a permanent physical D.Q.

Sometimes I still feel sad about that.  I know it would have been a very, very hard job, and I know that there’s a lot of anti-police sentiment out there right now…. But I still think I would have found it fulfilling.

But you know what?  That’s not what this post is about.

What this post is about is that on this day, back in 2009, I had one baby, lived in a one bedroom duplex in Fullerton, California, and had just passed the LAPD physical.

This morning, in 2018, I have four kids, a minivan, 3.5 horses, and live on acreage in St. Helens, Oregon. I was in the process of being mobbed by twin toddlers, trying to shrug my way into fancy little low heeled boots so I could go to my nice little office job in the city, when I heard the Bean call out in a strange voice from the bathroom:

“Becky?  Be-e-ecky?  A bald eagle’s gettin’ the chickens!”

“WHAT?”

“A bald eagle is eatin’ the chickens!”

As a mom, I’ve come to expect to hear a lot of strange stuff before 7 in the morning, but even I have to admit this was a first.

Not wasting the time it would take to look out the window and confirm, I darted out the sliding glass door, hollering for Artemis to follow me.  I could hear her claws on the hardwood floor (sorry, floor) as she leaped to obey, so I jumped out the door and bounded down the steps, trusting her to follow. If it sounds like a bad idea to bring a Labrador to a bald eagle fight, it wasn’t. I still think it would have worked.

Artemis is one of the most intelligent dogs I’ve ever owned, but she has one failing that is impossible to train out of her:  If you throw a pretend ball, she’ll chase it.

Every time.

She’ll chase it like her life depends on it – leveling out low to the ground, hind claws churning the dirt up behind her as she digs down deep with the force of her frantic run.

I’ve tried teaching her the difference since she was 4 months old, but she can’t help herself.  If you say, “Ready?”  and palm a fake ball, she’ll perk right up, and the second you “throw” it she’ll level out in a dead sprint in whatever direction that was.

I thought this might come in handy with the bald eagle.  Artemis doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, which is good –I would never be stupidly cruel enough to pit a dog against a large bird of prey, and I especially wouldn’t do anything to hurt a bald eagle.  I don’t know all the details, but I’m pretty sure they’re a nationally protected bird, and bad things happen to people who try to hurt them. I knew the bird was separated from us by a very secure 5 foot tall no climb fence.  My hope was that the sight of an angry adult human and a large 80 pound dog sprinting towards it at a dead run would be enough to make it reconsider ever coming back to this particular bit of land for its breakfast.

I headed out on the deck and down the steps, running as best as I could in my trendy little heeled boots (as in, not very well at all.) Even separated by a couple hundred feet, I could clearly see the bald eagle.  It was a full size adult, rich brown body contrasting with the snowy white of its head, flapping awkwardly around the paddock on absurdly long wings as it desperately tried to reach one of my chickens.  It would have succeeded, but every time it had almost grasped her in its talons one of the horses would thunder by in a spooked gallop, and it would have to take to the air again to avoid being trampled.  The chicken in question was the appropriately named Nugget, one of my Easter Eggers.  She was crouched down low, separated from the rest of the flock that had taken refuge beneath the horse shelter. I don’t know how, but she had somehow managed to squeeze herself between the fence and the water trough , making it nearly impossible for the eagle to reach through and grab her with its talons.

“Scat!  Scat!  ARTEMIS, WHERE ARE YOU?  COME?”

From back in the house, I heard one of the boys, “Mom, she’s inside!”

“What?  Artemis COME!”  Where was my dog?  I needed her to be sprinting at the eagle to truly scare it.  The sight of me slowly lumbering after it, with my pear-shaped hips and tottery heels was not exactly fear-inducing.

“MOM!  She’s not outside!  We got her!  She’s inside!”

And that’s when I realized they thought she’d run off, and that I was running off to try and catch her. They saw her coming out the door after me and had stopped her, locking her inside the living room. “NOOOO.  I need her!  Let her come out!”

“What?”

“Let her outside!”

“What?”

“ARTEMIS, COME!  ARTEMIS, READY?  ARTEMIS, GO GET IT!”

“Mom, we got her! Mom, she’s inside!”

“LET HER OUT!”

“What?”

By this time I was only about 50 feet away, and close enough to the eagle that it finally decided to give up.  It gave me a somewhat disgusted look. “That was MY breakfast, not YOURS.  RUDE,” before launching into the air.  Its wing span, its body, its everything… was huge.  HUGE.

It’s one thing to know that bald eagles are big, and to admire them soaring in the sky above you.  It’s one of the things about Oregon I’ll never grow tired of.

It’s quite another thing to be about 15 feet away from one, waving your arms and saying, “SCAT!  SHOO!  You leave my chickens alone!  Just…. Just SCAT!” and realize that if it didn’t feel like moving, there really wouldn’t be too much you could do to change its mind.

 

Luckily it did take flight.  Its wingspan was so large it looked awkward those first few beats off the ground as it tried to dodge the horses, but after a beat or two it levelled out and was out of sight surprisingly fast.

I’m hoping we can get the materials to cobble together a chicken tractor before it returns. Our hopes were to build a really big chicken coop this summer, but with all the nesting eagles in this area doing double time to feed their young, I don’t think the chickens are going to last that long.

Still.

I am definitely not in California anymore.