A Dark and Snowy Night.

A dark and snowy night tonight.  On a walk with my dog, Leo, around 9:30.  A small ‘commons’ called Terry Clark Park is a block away from my house.  Leo loves to run free there, working out a good poo.  I follow with my blue plastic bag.  Dry snow skitters down my collar.  I see a note pasted on the mailbox.  Barely readable in the light of the street lamp.  Lost toy helicopter, blue and black.  If found please call ___.

Sad little note.  I think of a child praying for a kind stranger to find the helicopter and the note.  I think of that moment of kindness and the birth of a child’s belief in the goodness of people.  But I don’t believe it will happen.  The toy could be in someone’s back yard, in someone’s truck, on a roof, or stuck in the bushes or in a tree.

I’m thinking I’d love to be that stranger, stumbling upon the lost toy.  I kick at the dark bushes in the park for a while.  Nothing.  I walk home, senses heightened, looking at rooftops in the dark, over fences into yards, and then, on the corner of my street, a large dark pine tree. Something moves slightly in the wind.  It seems translucent. I look closely.  A plastic bag?  A helicopter? I’m only 15 feet away.  No helicopter.  But a large, ghostly white owl, shifting from foot to foot watching my 75 pound dog.  Leo stands beside me, sniffing the ground.

I’m in awe.  Without the note in the park I wouldn’t have seen the owl.  I’m thinking I will buy that child a new helicopter.