Shamed by a Bald Eagle

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Lately there has been a television ad airing about a water filter pitcher maker that has claimed that there are enough empty plastic water bottles thrown away each year to encircle Earth two times. It is hard to imagine that.

I remember the first time I saw bottled water for sale. It was in 1981. I was in St. Petersburg, FL finalizing a deal for opening a Private Detective Agency branch office to be located in Pensacola, FL. In front of a Publix grocery store I observed what looked like soda machines but the machines had bottled water. I could not believe what I saw. I told my partner that lived in St. Petersburg that I could not believe that people would BUY bottled water and he related that the practice had been around Central Florida for many years.

I suppose this was a shock to me because the tap water in Pensacola was great tasting drinking water. Pensacola has one of the largest underground rivers (aquifers) in the nation. However, I then thought about how, 45 miles down the road from Pensacola, in Ft Walton Beach, FL, the water tastes like sulfur. That water is terrible to drink but it made some good tasting and dark iced tea.

Now we live in Orlando. The water in Central Florida is hard and it does taste terrible. We had a water softener installed and immediately saw and felt a difference with our laundry, shower doors and even our skin and hair. We also have a newer refrigerator that has a replaceable cartridge type water filter for the ice maker and water dispenser.

But even with the cold and crisp tasting water dispensed from the fridge, we buy water bottles. We actually buy the 16.9 ounce bottles and the smaller 8 ounce bottles. We freeze the smaller bottles and place them in our 8 year old’s (Wesli) bag lunches to keep her lunch and juice cool and she drinks the melting ice during the day. If we are lucky and she brings the bottle home, I will wash it, refill it from the fridge dispenser and then freeze it once again.

The larger water bottles are for convenience. It is easy to grab a water bottle on the go from the fridge rather than taking the time to fill a sports bottle from the fridge dispenser. I guess, putting it this way, it seems like it is not so much for convenience, but rather laziness. Oooops.

We keep bottled water in a mini fridge on the back patio as a convenience by not having to come into the house wet from the pool to get a drink. Once again, I suppose this is being lazy. We also keep a few bottles in the kitchen refrigerator as well as an over flow refrigerator we have in the garage. Again, having water bottles in the garage fridge is convenient if we are outside working or playing.

Since this television ad has been airing, I have attempted to cut down on the use of water bottles. I have asked Wesli to come inside to get herself and friends a drink of water with a glass and fridge-dispensed water instead of getting a water bottle from the garage fridge. When first asked, Wesli looked at me like I was crazy and then she tried it. It was almost like I had asked her to walk to school or something. I shared with her that when I was a kid, my mom would pretty much lock us out and we drank water from the outside water hose.....hot and nasty tasting rubber.

However, a few days later I realized that my requests had fallen onto deaf ears with Wesli. I had gone to get the morning paper and as usual, I opened the garage door and was making my way out to the end of the driveway. I was drinking my coffee and checking out a bald eagle in the top of a nearby tree. I bent to pick up the paper, turned around and there they were. Two 8 ounce water bottles were quietly and almost ghostly rolling from the garage down the driveway. I looked at the bottles and they both were about two-thirds full. All I could think about was the 40 cents that had rolled out from under my 4Runner and down the driveway....40 cents...gone. I was going back inside when I noticed two more large water bottles sitting near my lawn mower. These too were only partially consumed. There was another 40 cents sitting and wasting away. Wesli played basketball yesterday afternoon with a friend...she was busted...

I was certainly a bit disappointed, but not only with Wesli. I had asked Wesli to do something that was not convenient for her and that was not practiced by me. While standing in the garage, I could see a water bottle in my wife’s car and there was one in my 4Runners' center cup holder too. We are contributors to the waste that could encircle Earth two times.

As I was thinking guilty, I looked out the garage window as the door slowly closed. By this time the grand eagle had opened its long wings and began flying away but it looked back at me......its stern dark eyes and yellow beak very visible against the white feathered head....I wish I hadn't looked.....it was shaking its proud head in what seemed to be disappointment in me.

Godspeed