My little drunken grandpas

And how they are helping me cope

Along with tens of thousands of other people around the world, I have been watching the drama unfolding in a bald eagle nest in the Big Bear Valley of Southern California. Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle couple, have successfully hatched out three eggs — after three years of nothing.

Over the first week of March, first one egg, then the next, then after three days, where we all crossed our fingers and sent up thoughts and prayers for Egg Three, the final chick burst from the shell and the family became complete.

These chicks crack me up. They have soft grey down that sticks up all over their heads. They have dark, bleary eyes (the yellow hue and eagle-eye vision will develop over time) surrounded by rough, wrinkly skin. They can’t sit up straight, mostly, although that is coming fast. But right now, they lurch around the bowl of the nest, doing face plants, getting crushed by the other siblings, trying to stagger to some kind of upright position, reaching out for a bite of fish offered by Mom or Dad, and missing the target completely, and oops … another face plant.

They look like three little drunken grandpas, trying to weave and bob and stay upright.

We put the YouTube stream on the big TV and it just runs most of the day, like a digital window into a world that is thousands of miles away, and also right there in our family room. Sometimes, it’s just a peaceful scene—Jackie or Shadow roosting on the nest, the chicks tucked safely under the warm belly and the protective, encircling wings. The wind blows. The birds call. A raven croaks. The nest tosses along with the tree branches. The water shimmers on Big Bear Lake. The sunlight on the nest shifts with the turning of the planet. All is well. Sometimes, it snows. I can’t watch the snow, even though I know the eagles don’t mind it. I have a hard time watching Jackie get buried in an inch or more, even while I know the drunken grandpas are warm and safe.

Sometimes—more and more frequently—Jackie or Shadow flies in with a big fish or a coot (an ugly black water bird with disgusting, weed-filled intestines that the parents yank out of its belly like a hose). And then the little drunken grandpas go nuts, peeping at a high frequency you can barely hear, demanding their bites and bits of innards, and smearing raw fish in one another’s down. It’s also fun to watch the chicks do their PS (poop shots), like tiny squirt guns, keeping the whole digestive process going. I am often glad there is not Smell-a-Vision on this live stream, what with all the dead fish piling up on the edge of the nest, and the PSes.

For 35 years, I have watched bald eagles on the lake where we go in the summer. There is a nest (they moved the nest when the original one smashed to earth in a major storm a few years ago), but you can only look UP at it from a boat beneath it. In early August, we get to watch the young eagles fledge—hopping up and down on the nest edge for several days, screaming for MOM and DAD, while the parents perch silently on the next lake over, ignoring their adolescents. Finally, the eaglets lurch, fall, grab a nearby tree branch, and begin to figure out that they can glide from branch to branch. And one day, they flap and fly and soar. Sometimes, a few days after fledging, you can see one young eagle following its parent up into the sky, making slow, climbing circles, learning how to ride a thermal so high that it’s almost out of sight.

Getting to see into a nest and watch the whole Jackie and Shadow drama play out in real time has been restorative, and transformative, and all the wonderful “-ive” words you can think of. I am enthralled. I am soothed. I am engaged in an ongoing story of life and birth and growth that is a perfect antidote to all the trauma and anxiety and ugliness going on in the world around us. It keeps me off my phone. It keeps me away from the doomscrolling and doomsaying.

It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring, or stopped praying, or stopped working for the kind of just and loving world I believe God is calling us to co-create. But it means I sleep at night. And I breathe easier during the day.

Because at any minute, the eagle squeaks and squeals may start, and I will run to the family room and delight in the three little drunken grandpas demanding food and care and life.