Unexpected Visitor

This morning, I believe I was in my bedroom changing out of my regular Saturday yoga outfit, when I heard a lot of peculiar amount of cawing- and it wasn't far away either, directed at a hawk or other enemy. Obviously, /something/ was going in our backyard. My mother had let her cats out, Boy- our largest cat- who probably couldn't manage to catch anything out there, Jojo- who would likeliest to just observe as Angel did her fast and ferocious work. I've seen Angel catch birds before and this got me sort of worried. Even though Angel is almost fourteen years old and somewhat arthritic, when she wants to, she can really move. I hustled back downstairs and outside through the screen door. "What is it?" I asked. "I'm not sure," she answered, standing on our small porch. I was barefoot and she had sandals on. We both peered among the branches of the thick pomegranate tree in front of us and at first didn't see anything. I was beginning to think this was quite peculiar, because the crows higher above us hadn't stopped calling in the least. Whatever it was, someone perched on the neighbor's roof must have been able to see us reaching it... Since we bought and planted this pomegranate tree, we're learned a few things about it, and even though it's a dwarf variety, it needs to be cut back from time to time, leaving room beneath the main canopy to squeeze under and get a different view. Well, I shooed in the cats (Jojo being easiest to convince and Angel being harder- Boy could stay out on the other side of the yard as far as we were concerned) and shuffled over to get as close to my mom as I could. "There is a crow!" my mom agreed. Obviously, he wasn't that great a flier, but it was very typical that something like this would happen to us. I rushed back into my house for my camera. "You can go under there too," my mom suggested to me, pointing toward where she saw it. And it was a young crow?, probably? -as I had presumed. It's head and neck didn't look that great, but that could of have been because of its youth? Had some other animal- even another bird- attacked it previously? It seemed best to back off and shoo the one last cat in the yard out for the time being. I returned upstairs and finished changing into my clothes for the rest of the day. I came back to sit at the computer (where I had ultimately been headed in the first place). As I began to respond to some of my email, a shadow of wing (headed perilously close to the glass door), swooped over me and out of the yard. After lunch, we let all the cats out who'd been enjoying the backyard before.

comments button 0 report button