Dogwood blossoms kiss wafting clouds. The sun now is strong enough to burn me after winter has left me pallid. April is a month of special wonder.

En route to the zoo, I saw on a retention pond surrounded by duplexes a bird at once familiar and unfamiliar. I asked Sergey and Jasmine, did they think it was a loon? They thought it was more likely a duck because why would a loon, denizen of wild lakes and singer of an eerie song, have chosen this spot surrounded by Indianapolis’s web of highways to rest? 

But Jasmine offered to turn the car around so we could investigate the bird. We parked, she grabbed her binoculars wisely stowed in the car for just such moments, and we carried my nephew. 

The visitor was indeed a loon. 

I don’t think I had ever seen a loon before, but I had read about these unique creatures: their mad red eyes, their fearsome defense of family, their surprising vulnerability if they land in a pond too small for their lengthy takeoff. 

I’d seen a story some years ago about the bodies of a loon chick and a bald eagle being found together. The parent loon had attempted to save the chick, driving a long, sharp bill into the eagle’s heart. It seemed a noble tragedy worthy of Shakespeare.

Something about the shape of this bird had made me think loon while driving past—a bill capable of working as a dagger, perhaps. The loon stayed far from us, but through the binoculars, I could see the characteristic shawl of cross-hatched black and white draped across the back. We spent some time watching the unexpected visitor to suburbia. Finally, we left to go see expected animals labeled and stewarded in the Indianapolis Zoo.

The unexpected, the wild, the creatures not selected and maintained by humankind in cages and flowerbeds appeal with the joy of serendipity.