01022021

The hawk...

Hunting in the back woods the other day. The hawk flew just as I'd stopped to rest beside a tree.

I have decided that they must live in slow-motion. The blur of trees to the human mind trying to embody the bird's flight does not take into account the specialized neurons behind those great big eyes. We think too much with our big brains. The hawk is all eyeball and reflex, and what looks to us like airborne daredevilry is something smoother, gentler.

It killed one of my chickens the other day. A child found the carcass and came rushing to the house. No blood. I'd seen the hawk scoping them from an ash tree a few days prior. That's how they like to do it. Sit, watch. I wonder how it plans. Does it imagine its paths of attack in advance? Does it feel through the possibilities like a human child about to jump from a tree, letting his vision percolate through the nerves, preparing for the moment? Or is it something much simpler, a wordless "yes, yes, come back here"?

I don't begrudge the hawk its feast of chicken, especially not so near the start of this new year. That would be unneighborly.