Ossie the Osprey flew into an island of mangroves in Lemon Bay and settled down alongside Woody the Wood Stork.

“Hey, Ossie what have you been up to?”

“Oh, I’ve just been flying around trying to get away from the old lady.”

“Where you hanging out these days?”

“Oh, we’re down at the Storknest on Manasota Key.”

“You’re at the Storknest, I should be at Storknest — after all, I’m a Stork.”

“Well we’ve been there some five years now; we’ve got a rooftop suite about 150 feet up in the air in a Norfolk Pine, with a great view of the Gulf of Mexico.

“I didn’t even know that the people that own this place called it the Storknest until after I moved in.

“Where are you guys these days?”

“We’re on the mainland at Boca Royale Country Club; the old lady doesn’t like hurricanes.”

“You should fly-by some day and I’ll buy you a snapper. After lunch we can let the gals chat and we can go to my den, a matching Norfolk Pine which sits parallel to our home, and down a few.”

“That sounds great Ossie.”

Ossie and Woody go back a few years. They both went to Bird College together and discovered Manasota Key during a spring break.

Ossie found the Storknest through the internet, the guy that lives there is a blog.

He did a fly-by and found those two Norfolk Pines on an acre of land on the Gulf. He selected the left tree entering the walled compound and saw how the tree bifurcated at the top and quickly deducted from his engineering background that it was a perfect place for a nest.

Ossie knew the history of his family realizing that the Osprey’s diet consists almost exclusively of fish and this location didn’t require him to go far to provide for his family.

Knowing full well that it’s his family’s nature to mate for life he thought he should pick the location for his nest carefully — after all he heard somewhere here in Florida that it was location location location.

He checked out the tree carefully taking into account that he and his wife weigh between 3 and 4 lbs and have a wingspan of 5-6 feet and need an appropriate landing zone. He then had to take into consideration that mama was going to hatch two to four eggs and he wanted a nest that could house everyone at once.

He scouted the area for the appropriate materials for the nest and knew that he needed an abundance of sticks, driftwood and seaweed to be built in the fork of this tree in order to build a sturdy nest for the family, but one that was small enough to keep the family warm in chilly weather.

The Storknest was the place for Ossie and his mate.

A few weeks after Ossie flew into the mangroves and met Woody, Ossie was in his den, which also served as a sentry post for his home, and he saw Woody and his wife coming into the flight pattern. He took off to escort them into the nest.

They landed and with the appropriate bird perfunctory greetings behind them, Ossie said he was going out for the snapper he promised Woody.

Ossie was between 32 and 130 feet above the Gulf when he spotted his prey just offshore of the Storknest when he plunged feet first into the water his nostrils automatically closed, he clutched onto the snapper ascended quickly and during flight shifted the fish from a horizontal position to a vertical one to eliminate drag on take off.

Back at the nest the Osprey’s and Stork’s were finishing up lunch, when Ossie suggested to Woody that they retire to the Den in the other Norfolk Pine and have an after dinner drink.

“Hey, Ossie how are you getting along with your neighbor?”

“Oh, you mean the blog?”

“Yeh.”

“Well, in the beginning we had a little trouble. I accidentally dropped a pretty good size snapper in the driveway. You see his garage sits right under our nest. The fish stuck to his tire and he didn’t recognize it until the next morning when he opened the garage door.

“I guess the garage smelled pretty bad. Well that day he climbs the 150 feet to my penthouse suite and wants to charge me rent.

“I told him that if he didn’t get out of my tree I would drop a dozen fish a day in his driveway. Then he started negotiating with me to go into business and he would sell the fish.

“I didn’t hear from him again until he came up here again complaining about the kids pooping on his red tile roof.

“I told him that my family doesn’t eat anything that would make them poop red. I gave him two options, he could move his garage, after all he has an acre of land here, or, paint his roof white.”

” I know what you mean; we have our problems at Boca Royale too!”