We
have bird bath in our back yard. It has
pretty simple architecture. That
concrete molded stuff. Came with the
house, I think. It has become a popular
vacation spot for birds of all sorts of feathers. You know, the full spa treatment, or at least
a quick bath before the big bully blackbirds arrive. Lots of fun to sit at our window and
watch. Even more fun when Freddy
realizes a customer has arrived. She
creeps up the stairs to the deck and tries to sneak up on them. Hasn’t been successful so far, but the interchange
is quite entertaining.
When
we were doing yard work the other day, Chris happened to walk by the bird bath,
as she has done on so many other fine Island mornings. But this time something caught her eye. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Is this a bird, a dead bird?” I made my way over, and sure enough, there
was indeed a small body submerged in the water.
As far as I could tell there were no tiny cement overshoes on it, so
foul play by blackbird mobsters was ruled out.
I grabbed a small, flat stone to use as a shovel to transfer the beast
into more appropriate burial grounds.
And that’s when I made the discovery.
This was no dead bird, accidentally felled and ending his days at the
spa in peace and harmony.
Nope. Oh, it was a body, all right. The body of a rat. Not a large one, mind you, but a rat,
nonetheless. And to make the matter even
more suspicious, this rat body was … headless.
That’s right. No head at all,
anywhere in the surrounding deep. The
head was simply … gone. In its place was
the almost unbearable stench of death.
The body itself had not yet begun to decompose, but the stink had indeed
arrived. How long ago had this body drop
occurred? Who was responsible? This was not the M.O. of the aforementioned
Blackbird Crew. They are bullies, to be
sure, but headless? No. They are too cowardly for such extremes. A cat?
Perhaps, but Freddy does a pretty decent job of keeping the back yard
rid of such foul beasts. Raccoon? Opossum?
All maybe’s.
So
as is her way, Chris decided to look it up on the internet. What critter could possibly have been content
to remove a rat’s head and leave the rest behind in a pool of water? It didn’t take long to find a likely
suspect. A raptor. No. not the Jurassic Park, velociraptor
kind. I’m pretty sure we would have
noticed that. No, this would have been
one of those feathered beasts that feeds specifically on mice and other small rodents. Falcons.
Hawks. Even an owl. We saw one of those fly by a week or so
ago. Now, why he would have eaten off the
head and left the tender juiciness of the body is still an unanswered
question. Perhaps as he was in the process
of cleaning off his prey, he was scared away by the sudden arrival of a certain
ferocious guard dog.
I
suppose we shall never know for certain.
The body was interred at a more appropriate location in a pauper’s grave
outside the walls of the spa grounds.
The bath has been sanitized and refilled, and the Blackbird Crew is back
with a vengeance, doing battle with the Mockingbird Mob. And all’s well in the world of the Sparrow
Independents who sneak in when the big boys are off on a job.
Zephaniah
2:3 says, “Seek the Lord, all you humble
of the land, you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day
of the Lord’s anger.”
Father,
thank you for the window into the world that is our backyard. It can be fascinating. Amen.
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