Today while walking home from grocery shopping I was a few minutes away from the Stop & Shop I passed by a tributary of the river and was just about at an empty parking lot. And what did I see? An honest-to-goodness hawk. Not flying overhead. It was just there, perched on the railing, still and watchful and―at the shortest distance―just a couple of feet from me. It was kind of an unnerving experience because those birds are huge and they're very efficient killers. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't cool as well.
Later in the same walk I looked down at the sidewalk and saw a pair of black lace panties. It might be significant that the street I was on also has a big laundromat, albeit a number of blocks back. An educated guess tells me that the hawk didn't have anything to do with the skivvies. Still, the writer in me wants to conjecture that it did.
2 comments:
Considering just how rare and unusual to have such an experience on a city street it seems to me your close encounter with the hawk was a mark of grace.
People do hunt with hawks whose efficiency is well known. Even more interesting to me was when I first heard about the hunting eagles of Mongolia. This video is the one I remembered having seen a few years ago (you can skim past the first five minutes as it gets good right after).
Tonight we watched a movie I think you'd like if you haven't seen it already. Called New Orleans (1947) it's the only film Billie Holiday made in her prime. It also features Louis Armstrong among many more old jazz stars in a story about a lame white romance. Hmmm..
"Mark of grace" is a good way to characterize it. I almost wrote "Marc of grace" which sounds like a given name that gives away too much. But anyway, I think maybe there are at least opportunities to see the wondrous all around.
If I were a hunter and was also looking for a bird - or maybe just an animal - to help me with that, I'd probably want an eagle or hawk. And both are apparently tameable if not domesticable. Might be other complications now.
Kid Ory is in the New Orleans movie as well. Seems to be pretty low budget, but one still could have potentially been the music movie of the year.
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