My Little Park

Most of my work day lunches are spent reading. Occasionally, I will tag along with "the ladies" from work, or meet an old friend for the Indian buffet, but usually I eat alone, save the company of my latest novel of choice.

There are some single-eater-reader friendly establishments in driving distance, such as Panera or Boston Market, but mostly the restaurants in the area give off an angry and resentful vibe if you decide to take up a whole table by yourself leaving sometimes as many as three seats empty beside you. Seats that could be filled, in the eyes of management, by hungry, and social, patrons.

So, more often than not, I retrieve a to go meal from any number of fast food joints and head to My Little Park.

My Little Park is a wonderful little sanctuary in the middle of California suburbia that is relatively unknown by the local lunch crowd. It is usually crowded not with the hustle and bustle of corporate individuals but with the greedy geese, ducks, and various other fowl seeking a donated morsel here and there. This park is peopled with other lone diners, such as myself, but also with stay-at-home moms that bring their infants to see the giant, white geese that can look them in the eye, with dog-walkers, joggers, picnickers, and the occasionally present middle-aged man with his mandolin and music stand.

Today I really examined my little park again, something I haven't done in too long. There are more geese now. I don't know how the word gets out, but the range from the standard, but very large, white geese with stark yellow bills, to gorgeous and elegant brown, black, and white geese with devastatingly elegant black bills to match their black, webbed feet. There are also bizarre little geese, I assume, with black and white splotchy feathers and giant red bills with huge protrusions on them that appear unhealthy, but they all have them, so it must be natural. The ducks have been bullied into shy numbers, but they still manage to always stay in pairs, swimming side by side with their loved ones, or walking in the shade of the trees searching for unexpecting insects.

The seagulls came back today as well. They are a less frequent visitor, but they always announce their arrival with great fanfare. Screeching and hollering until they are noticed and then circling to the ground in great concentric circles as a group, landing one at a time as if there were an approach pattern. Today one of them caught a fish from the little pond to one side of the parking lot. He couldn't determine how it should be eaten, though, because it was flat and wide, so wide that the seagull could not fit it in his mouth.

The pace of My Little Park is so laid back and calm that it is not uncharacteristic for a duck to waddle out into the middle of the road and fluff out his feathers to settle on the warm, black roadway. When traffic comes through, they angrily shake themselves to a standing position and then, with great agitation, meander out of the way. I have seen a dozen of them do this at one time. Today I saw what I believe was a duck sleeping. It was resting on one leg with the other curled up under its wings and its head and neck folded into the feathers on its back. Its little eye was closed (the one that I could see) and it was shaking and jerking the same way my cat does when she is having a dream, undoubtedly catching that pesky little grasshopper that stays just out of her reach on the window to the patio.

There are rabbits and squirrels, as well, and I once was watching a little squirrel forage for bugs or seeds in the grass when, to both of our shock and surprise, a hawk swooped down and grabbed him up for lunch. There are crows that circle and try to snatch away the daily catch of the seagulls, when they are in town, or the hawk, when she lets them, and they will also take leftovers when prompted. I gave several of them an apple core once, walked about ten feet away, and waited to see how long it would be before they would trust me and take the apple. The one that did picked it up and moved it another few feet away before eating it with his eyes always on me.

In this crazy, busy, lightning-paced world of Corporate America, it is especially nice to have a little park that is all mine, a world apart, and yet still close enough for my lunch break.