I return home with Dante, after a boisterous on-leash walk, to find the bird feeding feeders and picnic table seed strewn area subdued. All the birds in the trees, peering down.
I take note of that, and then notice , as we walk toward the house , the place where the adolescent Broadwing Hawk struck again, capturing yet another Morning Dove.
A few feathers are strewn here and there, the marks of the dove's wings as they struggled, barely any marks of the hawk.
And I feel subdued also, Dante quiet, as he sniffs the feathers, learning the ways of the world.
We had just been on a walk along a flat straight Street not far from our home, created just before The economy crashed. Kind of an empty neighborhood, with snowbanks that Dante leaps up upon on one side, sinks into the deep snow, hopping about like a bunny, big chunk of ice in his mouth, then races down and back up the other snowbank on the opposite side.
I cheered him on, whooping and clapping, holding tight to the retractable leash with my gloves on, gazing at the pale blue clouds overhead, -1°.
But somebody very kind offered me an acupressure session, and after getting all I could out of his walk, to move his big muscles, and this being a time where I can't go trudging up mountains in deep snow, we had returned home to drop him off.
Now we're are standing on the snow blowed walkway to the house, and I'm looking up in the trees to see if I can see the young hawk, which you often can, as they actually don't weigh very much, they just have big looking fluffy feathers. So it's not easiest thing to lift a Dove, that is instantly died, and get up hungrily to a branch,, to stave off hunger, to survive.
This morning as we left when it was -5°, I left to my husband, although it's not a laughing matter, about how Darwin would've been interested in today, this time of year being the Academy of survival of the fittest. Both for humans features I like.
For the native peoples who lived in the northern lands hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before we decimated and relocated and did everything we could to run them, they would call these the hunger times.
They anticipated that they can put only so much food by, and that they would all be on a sort of a fast, WA. They accepted it as part of the lifecycle, and tried to stave off the possibility of young, old, and vulnerable dying off. But I asked they did. Until March, and then April, hunting was my possible, and the green shoots of living things emerged.
So here we enter the hunger times of the wild creatures, the cold temperatures necessitating increased caloric intake. The inexperienced hocks heading for the birdfeeders. Heading for the morning dives. The only ones they really can take, as they both are rather unwieldy.
The pup seems quieted too, by the smell of death upon the ground. As we go into our warm home, the has food, from the car that we do have, the washer in the dryer. If you've ever lived without a washer in the dryer, you know what amazing advantages they are.
We settle the pup down before I leave for my appointment, counting my blessings upon my fingers, over and over and over.
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