Every once is a while I get to see something I'd never seen before, and sometimes it is something I've wanted to see throughout my life.

Last night was one of those moments. From my life as a little kid, my friends and family did a lot of fishing in very remote areas, often staying in tents in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Many nights I fell asleep to the sound of whip-or-wills. Sometimes they could be annoying as they took up a roost right outside the tent.

Last night I was fishing a remote mountain lake, and I was on a narrow shoreline that had a lot of brush and downed trees all around me. I could hear whip-or-wills and owls all around the lake.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, a small bird fluttered right past the front of of my face, and landed about ten feet away on a thick branch of a downed pine tree. It immediately started its song -- it was almost ear splitting, but beautiful. If it had been a few feet further away, I would never have been able to see it. It blended almost perfectly with the bark on the pine branch. I continued to fish for about another 10 minutes, and it stayed and serenaded me.

When it was time to leave, I had to work my way through some pretty heavy brush, and the bird left.

This was a much happier moment than one last week we I got to meet only the second black widow in my life. I was hauling lumber trash in my front end loader. Some was good, some was going to the burn pit. As I got to the bottom piece for the burn pit, a black widow was under that board on the bottom of my loader. I took off before I could find a jar to catch it in.

Ken

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