Mood:
surprisedTopic: "EOTUS" (5)
Congress Heights is a section of Washington, D.C. abandoned by all but the poorest of the poor many years ago. Not unlike Washington itself, the area is overwhelmingly black, crime-ridden, and bearing a per capita income that would be in triple figures at best were it not for governmental largesse. The flight of the white middle class from Congress Heights parallels the post-War growth of the suburban home and the white picket fence. For a variety of reasons, certainly including the costs of transportation and real estate itself, there is evidence of a return and a revival of center city neighborhoods in many parts of Middle Earth. Surprising it is for Frodo to find the United States Government itself standing in the way, and threatening the existence of true urban pioneers.
A pair of American bald eagles have built a nest in the nation's capital for the first time in 63 years. The National Park Service has confirmed the existence of the nest in that section of town known as Congress Heights. The disclosure would not have been made public at all until the Department of Homeland Obscurity announced its decision to build its mega-headquarters in the wooded area which surrounds the nest. The agency has many and varied reasons for the project, but many other people feel that the inevitable result will be a flight to a different location, returning the District of Columbia to a haven for eagles of the concrete statue variety, alone.
Eagles are shy birds that prefer forest and farmland, and their acceptance of a panorama of apartment buildings, a national airport, and the screaming jets of Bolling Air Force Base, certainly signal an unpredictable environmental acceptance of peaceful ccoexistence. The area of the nest is known as Shepherd Parkway, and it is part of the remains of a Civil War era defensive fort constructed amid a ravine that is deep enough to shield the young. The Anacostia and Potomac rivers, both of which were once almost polluted beyond redemption, meet nearby, providing a substantial source of fish for the "urban eagles." The eagle population that was nearly driven to extinction seems to have forgiven us, and is doing its best to join us in the reclamation of our great cities. "Something is happening in nature out there that we can only speculate about," said Craig Koppie of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, to the Los Angeles Times. "They are becoming more tolerant of us."
There is no doubt that Congress Heights would benefit mightily by the jobs, the improvements in the infrastructure, and the return of a diverse population to the neighborhood. There is however, a greater risk. That risk being people having to do the job alone, without the assistance of those winged homesteaders known by the Park Rangers as "DC-07-01."
To Frodo, they are, and will always be known by what he imagines would be their Secret Service identification, that being, of course "EOTUS."
