Last week, I came home to a missing duck. I couldn't find her anywhere. In the morning, when I went to let out my birds, I found her . . . carcass is the only word for it. She'd been quite thoroughly eaten. There were feathers everywhere.
I should mention here that I live in a rural area. I knew, when getting ducks and chickens, that I would lose some. Just 2 years ago, I lost over 10 birds - I have one bird left that survived that year. So while I might seem terribly uncaring about it all, I went into this whole thing with the mindset that wild animals would occasionally eat my birds. But it's still hard.
I was pretty sleep deprived that day, so my reactions were a bit dulled. I moved her body out of the pen, let out the remaining chickens and ducks, and went inside. Then I looked at the camera system.
A couple years ago, we had some kids come by when we weren't home and shoot our ducklings. We of course couldn't prove it was them, but we're pretty sure. So a couple months ago my totally awesome husband installed a camera system around the house, so if something like that happens again, we can catch it on video tape and actually do something about it.
So anyway, I went into the camera system to see if I could find out what had happened to my bird. It took a couple tries, but I finally loaded up the pertinent screens. And sat back to watch. Even on 8x acceleration (which is as fast as our playback goes), an entire day takes a LONG time, so I very quickly started jumping randomly around. I wasn't even positive my duck's demise would be caught on camera, as they don't cover our entire yard. But, right about 4:30, I saw it.
On the right hand edge of the screen sat a bald eagle. Right in my pasture. Eating. While details couldn't be seen, I'm pretty certain our resident bald eagle that lives across the street was indeed the culprit.
On the one hand, I'm upset to lose my duck. She wasn't a favorite duck, I couldn't even tell her apart from her sisters, but she was my duck. She rather regularly laid an egg a day. But more than that, she was my animal, my responsibility, and I take keeping my animals safe very seriously. However, it is nice to now know what happened to my animal, whereas before I'd find a dead/eaten bird, or just never find it, and never know exactly what happened.
On the other hand, I had a bald eagle sitting in my front yard!! Now, I've worked with these birds quite a bit, doing rehab work, and I'm not nearly as enthralled with them as most people. But still, a bald eagle! Was sitting in my front yard! Eating my duck. Not so exciting.
Next summer, when I move my teaching studio to my house, that probably will not happen, as I'll have students coming and going the entire day. And if it does happen, a couple of my students will probably get to hear some rather colorful language as I run off whatever predator.
But what does this teach me about teaching? This was a pretty horrific event, but even I had different interpretations of it. I need to remember that every student is going to have some different interpretations. I'm sure some of the things I said about this event seem pretty off to you - you might have a completely different reaction. Similarly, when I'm teaching a student a new piece, or even reviewing an old piece, playing a scale or exercise, whatever, I need to remember they may take away something different, and that's okay. However, if I want them to learn something specific, like say, from a scale, I need to tell them about it. But when it comes to their pieces, their music is their own, and their interpretation is right for them.
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