slippage

A new day presented itself and the mental parts of me had cranked and were running smoothly but the physical parts were sputtering and threatening to quit at any moment – they just wanted to go and sit down. As I wandered into the kitchen, pretty much limping on both feet and maybe a hand, I heard a big ruckus outside. It was a cacophony of crow caws that seemed to have urgency in their tone. I looked out the window to see a whole flock of crows yelling in their own language at a hawk that was perched on the ground.

The raptor seemed to hardly be noticing all the noise they were putting forth because it had something in its clutches but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. These black-feathered flyers were even diving at the bird of prey but at a respectful and cautious distance. My curiosity was raised just a bit, so I went outside with my small gauge shotgun to possibly upset the crows a little more – I don’t care for crows at all, a fact I have mentioned on occasion.

A little advice here, if you ever go outside in the early morning while the dew is still on the garden hose that is lying in loose coils out on the hill beside my garage, be clad in footwear other than slick bottomed flip-flops. As I stepped on the dew-covered coil of hose, my feet went up and northward and the rest of me went down and southward – with the gun in my hand. Nothing happened with the gun but my backside was still feeling the results of the fall a couple of days later.

The muscadines and blueberry bushes screened my approach and the crows didn’t even know to laugh at what happened. As I stepped from behind the cover, the hawk saw me right away and vamoosed but I don’t think the crows ever realized I was close and flew away with the hawk to try and harass it some more. With all the excitement over, I came back in the house to have breakfast.

I later donned more suitable footwear and walked down to see if I could tell what the hawk had caught. I expected to find the remains of a hapless animal of prey that the hawk had been munching on but instead I found a dead crow. None of the crow had been eaten and I concluded that it must be as distasteful to hawks as it is to humans that occasionally have to “eat crow”.

I do like hawks, I probably wouldn’t if I tended chickens but that is not the case. I admire their graceful flights, soaring so effortlessly high above the earth. I know that crows do serve a purpose but it is a more distasteful one to me. Nonetheless I still rejoice and am awed by all of God’s creation, be it animal or plant and am amazed that the God of the universe cares for someone such as me. ec