I'm standing in the chicken yard, glad to see that my three geese have their game back on after nearly being eaten by the dogs last week. Peepers, Darwin and Duchess are marching around at me feet, honking loudly, mostly at my knees, which I know if I don't watch, they'll be tempted to nip. Luckily, I'm wearing jeans. I think all this talk has something to do with the fall weather, and the fact that they are feeling itchy. Itchy to be a thousand feet above the earth with the few wild geese that pass our way here.

This is the kind of day that inspires my plump, domesticated geese to lumber as fast as their stout legs and flat feet will carry them while flapping their wings for all they're worth to get a few seconds (and occasionally more) of airborne bliss. Sometimes they are lifted up and carried by the wind and the sheer force of all their enthusiasm just over the fence and into the pasture next door. Then I have to scale railroad ties and barbed wire to go fetch them--honking and carrying on something terrible--back from their delusions of flying south.

And then I see the red tailed hawk.

He is sailing between the pinon trees on his golden wings, silent as an arrow shot from a the crossbow of a serious hunter. And right on his tail glides a magpie, a frankly rather scrawny one.

I am shocked, because this is the first magpie I've seen on our ranch. Maybe he's not too smart, and has managed to get himself lost. That would explain his rather shopworn appearance. We're a good two miles from the river here. And I'm even more surprised to see a magpie and a hawk together. Are they together? I ask myself. What are they doing? I wonder.

Well, if he's trying to run that red tailed hawk off, then the little magpie seems to be no match for the raptor who looks to me as if he came down into my chicken yard straight from the sun. A sun bird I am thinking as the magnificent fellow swoops through the trees and disappears.

Just as quickly, the magpie gives up the chase. Lands on the topmost branch of a pinon. Preens his rumpled but formal suit of feathers and begins to sing like Pavoratti. He'd been working so hard before to keep up with that hawk, I'm surprised he has any breath left in his body. The black and white bird makes chortling, whirring, whistlings, clackety-clack sounds in his throat, beak pointed into the air, as if he's celebrating something.

I walk to the edge of the fence to get a closer look, but that bird could care less about me, and continues his commotion, although I'm pretty sure he knows I'm there. As the magpie proceeds with his raucous, crackling, show-off symphony, I consider all that empty air in between the trees and think about what a strange thing this has been to see. I mull it over as I finish taking care of the hens and the geese, and I begin to entertain the idea that there's something more to this.

So I hunt around, and I find this old story. And I'm thinking it's true what they say. The same ones really are being told again and again and again. Whether you see it at the movies or read it in a book or an ancient myth. Or very possibly are just minding your own business and feeding the hens when the story unfolds right there in front of you, just above the chicken scratch.