Sometimes in the course of doing something like walking from one place to another over the span of several days an event occurs that becomes a defining moment for the whole expedition. Such an event did occur for us on our third day of walking. In a mile or so we would exit the woods onto NY Route 8 in Piseco when we came to a flooded area of trail.  To our right several yards off the trail was a beaver dam four foot high and fifty yards long.  To our left about 20 yards off the trail was a second dam that we could only see the top of. It was this second dam that had made what was once a trail into a pond.  Trees in the pond were drowning and would soon lose all of their canopy creating an opening to the sky in what was once dense woodland. Our immediate dilemma was how to navigate around this body of water. We chose to go off trail to the right and walk on the beaver dam. This sounds simple in theory but anyone who has crossed a new, active beaver dam will tell you that they can be fragile and unstable in their upper most reaches. This particular dam proved to be a good passage. Yes we had to place our steps carefully so as to not sink in the muck backing the dam, trip on the tangled maze of sticks, or break the dam down unnecessarily. This required attention and focus. I was ahead of Jerry but he stepped down off of the dam as soon as he reached dry land, I continued on a couple of yards farther to get to a spot with a clearer spot to clamber down. It was at this point that the event occurred. Suddenly the woods were filled with cries of murder - "Murder most fowl, as in the best it is; But this most fowl, strange and unnatural."¹ And attempted murder it surely was. Our heads jerked toward the direction of the commotion and saw two avian creatures in the air flapping wings in the same space; one screaming the above quote the other quietly intent on maintaining a grasp on the screamer so as to lift her clear of the little pond. The grasp was lost, the screamer dropped back into the water and the grasper landed on a limb only a few feet above the water. I was caught with one foot tangled in the dam, the other on firm ground as I tried to extricate my camera from its case on my chest. I crashed a little as I alighted on the firm

1 The author takes no responsibility for the accuracy of this quote. I do not speak any dialect of duck and have consulted with a translator (one Daffy Duck) who assures me that this is an accurate translation. Mr. D. Duck also characterized my questions as to the veracity of his translation as despicable.