A few dear reader(s) know that when I first saw our current rental home, I got terribly excited about the body of water it sat on. I pulled my phone out and immediately did some mensuration with Google maps, to discover that I could easily swim some kilometer loops, then exit in my backyard, rinse off at the spigot, and march into the house, never once getting in a car or paying a pool membership.

We must get this house, was my primary thought.

Sure, landlubbers would of course answer in the negative when I ask if I can swim in the lake. “OMG, no, gross.” Expected. Most of these people can’t imagine swimming in most bodies of water, or what they call swimming is merely dipping. I brushed off those warnings and posed my question to the tried-and-true scientific community that is Google.

Well, not really. I’m lucky that I know a great many people in the swim world, and that includes the swim world that is Boston Open Water community. I posed the question to this wonderful group and immediately got a response from one of my favorite people and incredible marathon swimmers: Bad news. Ell Pond is not clean enough for humans.

But that’s not to say that the Pond isn’t suitable for other living things.

Saturday morning I was out with my geriatric dog doing the slow-march around said Pond when what did I spy with my little eye? Two adolescent bald eagles sitting on the frozen water.

What you see above are two adolescent bald eagles on the carcass of a Canadian goose that got frozen in the Pond. The eagles remained on the goose for at least an hour, at least for as long as I was watching.

These eagles were the highlight of my weekend. About a week ago I’d seen a red hawk on a tree in the neighbor’s backyard. But, a symbol of America right there in my hoped-for outdoor swimming pool? Priceless!