RED HOOK HAWK

A few weeks ago I was pitterpattering on the computer, diligently filing my unemployment insurance, snooping on ex-girlfriends on facebook and pondering my desolate financial future. My desk (which is really the kitchen table in Danny’s apartment from whom I rent a room and kitchen/office access) faces out into the quasi-wilds of a Brooklyn backyard.

Something stirred off in the far corner of the yard, behind the decrepit hydrangea by the stone wall. I hauled myself away from the table/desk with a put-upon sigh and peered out. What was that, a pigeon? Yes, a pigeon was involved. There was a flap of a grey and white pigeon wing. But looming over the thrashing wing was something much bigger. I couldn’t see through the branches and the brush. A few inches of mottled white underbelly, a long arching brown wing, a flash of light colored underwing, more pigeon fluttering, blood. I must’ve tapped accidentally against the glass (or perhaps the “what the fuck?” wasn’t so under my breath) because it looked me dead in the eye.

A hawk was staring at me with a strip of pigeon meat dangling from its beak. I shifted slowly behind the curtains partially so as not to disturb it but, to be honest, partly because the fucker scared me. There was something accusatory in his glare and the fact that he had meat in his curved sharp beak and a pigeon was taking its final twitches in his talons made me feel like I was invading his backyard which, if you want to get all naturalist about it, I was. Judging me not a threat (hey!) he turned back to his biological duty – disassembling the pigeon piece by piece. I dialed my friend Coleman, a former ornithologist turned environmental lawyer (and beer drinking buddy). I got his voicemail and whispered a (probably inaccurate) description into his voicemail hoping he would call me back to identify the species as though that would somehow legitimize this bizarre event. Next I called my parents who retired from New York years ago to the country so they could see this kind of thing all the time. Suckers! I didn’t have to drive anywhere for a quart of milk AND I had Marty Stouffer’s Wild America LIVE without having to move at all. Again I left a whispered description into an electronic voicemailbox.

With no one to share this with I settled in to watch as, over the course of nearly forty minutes, this hawk meticulously stripped every morsel from the lesser bird. Finally he seemed satisfied with his work, like his job was less to eat the meat and more to clean the bones in some sort of pigeon disassembly plant. He turned, at last, away from me and I saw his rusty-red tail feathers jutting out from under his folded wings. Red tail hawk! Red tail hawk! My sighting now had species specificity and was therefore legit! He gave me one more threatening glare, a little Mafia warning to keep my trap shut about what I’d just seen, extended his wings and flapped off over the buildings, and the B.Q.E. towards Red Hook.

I cautiously slid open the patio door and crept out to the site. The pigeon had been quartered into the exact same parts that you get in a bucket of KFC. The ribcage had been split in two and the narrow ribs picked clean. The pink little feet lay crossed one over the other in a pile of soft down that had been ripped away to allow access. One wing lay fully extended in a beautiful arc. I had taken no pictures, no youtube videos. The only evidence of my witness to this beautiful, bloody act of nature was the pile of down and bones at my feet. I stared at the CSI scene before me. I swept what I could into a doubled plastic bag and put it in the trash can in front of the house with the empty Amy’s Organic Pizza box and Trader Joe’s burrito wrapper, not sure if today was trash day or recycling day. I returned to my kitchen desk, my computer, my pitterpattering, and my unemployment insurance.