Pheasant Explosion

We took a chilly Thanksgiving Day hike in the Columbia Gorge. The perfect way to work up an appetite. It was cold and damp, but the wind wasn't too hurricane-like and the sun even broke through the clouds for a bit. First time we've seen it in a week!

 We tromped through the leaf carpet and forded a couple of small impromptu streams and then scared a pheasant. It burst out of the ground cover right in front of us in a flurry of beating wings, which made me scream out loud; I'm not even going to lie, only afterward did I remember that there were small children with me who were probably traumatized by my screaming, not the interesting bird they never even noticed because of the crazy lady hyperventilating and scaring every other animal far far away for the remainder of our hike.

So goes my effort to NOT pass on my phobia to my children.

Exhausted from fending off a crazy lady.