I have noticed that midday at Echo Park Lake, things sometimes get sleepy and sometimes a little ugly. My friend and neighbor Angela Wood sent me the following account of a visit to the lake. I am not sure what time of day she describes, but I imagine it to be after the early morning rush.

Angela writes:

I forgot to tell you about my morbid experience at Echo Park Lake the other day. It is quite the flip side to your pastoral account of the geese from October 29th (I am very fond of that entry), but I think both are valid Echo Park experiences.

I stopped by the lake the other day with B [my daughter], just killing time, with a pocket full of some extra stale bread. It was one of those rare, gray, overcast days. We went to that hinterland of geese muggers, the peninsula where there is often a homeless person or two fishing from a mattress. The geese started in. I was reminded of a scene in Barbarella where little baby doll-robots with metal teeth, come mechanically chomping at Jane Fonda's legs, and, despite their tiny size, end up tackling her to the ground and tearing at her leotards - this scene was much more organic and it was on Earth.

Anyway - the geese were coming at us, hissing and pecking at my ankles, I kind of lost it when they started in on B and careened her stroller away, down the path. We found a piece of lake where there were three unique examples of water fowl, James Brown duck (a.k.a. "Hairdo") -- that one with the black feathers and a little pompadour on top of his head -- his side kick (Dulce) a kind of caramel colored misfit duck, and a grebe who had his head down in the water - looking for food I assumed. After some time of throwing crumbs to this motley crew, I noticed the grebe was not coming up for air. I got a kind of queasy panicky feeling, and started calmly inching sideways, not wanting to instill fear of Echo Park Lake in my 1-year-old, inching away from the dead grebe. My mind was filling with angry questions and somehow a sense of shame for making this discovery. Then, as I was giving Hairdo and Dulce a what-for for luring me to this watery grave, I noticed on the other side of them, a fish, belly up, eyes bulging.

I agree there is something about the filthiness of the water in Echo Park Lake gives a feeling of horror to presumably “natural” events such as the death of a fish or grebe. Though a dead grebe AND dead fish on either side of the ducks -- that sounds like some kind of poison, whether intentional or not. In various corners, the water in Echo Park Lake is slick with dirty scum, and there is trash. It looks all the more filthy when you see a heron chick lounging just above it. In cleaning up the lake –- as there are plans to do -- it’s hard to know what would be worse, the removal, even if temporary, of the entire system, or scrapping plans and letting the water get worse and worse. My best hope is that there will be a way to clean the lake without draining the entire thing.

As for the geese. I myself reported having been mugged by a pair of over-eager birds. But I want to add that, although it’s quite scary for a toddler to see the geese nipping and harassing, the geese don’t have teeth. Although they do seem to have a chip on their “shoulders,” as they seem to be aware that most people prefer to feed the ducks.