Birds in the Eye

Everyone asks where the birds go in a hurricane, the weather man said, then immediately answered his own question. They go to the eye. They leave their home and move with the wind. They seek safety in motion.

So into yesterday afternoon's pictures of sheeting rain and furious gusts came an image — blue skies and calm winds. An over-the-rainbow extravaganza with Disney-like birds flitting from bough to bough while a tempest raged around them.

Not exactly. The real eye was significantly less dramatic. But the palms stopped blowing and there was an eerie silence. I saw no birds.

Hurricanes have to be one of nature's strangest phenomena. Waters sucked out of harbors, fish flapping, the eye wall, the eye — and then, a complete reversal, the back side of the storm. Winds shift direction and waters surge in, strengthened and pushed by the gale. 

And what of the birds then? They stay with the eye, they fly with the eye. They've learned something most of us never do: to find the calm center, to stay the course.