Natural Selection

This weekend was nice to have off and though Sunday was a snowy, cold day, Saturday turned out to be a good day to get out.

Amber and Camaron were here most of the weekend and they were looking forward to fishing and a nice barbeque grill dinner. They each caught a bass, Ambers was 2 1/2 lbs, Camarons was 2 lbs, and added to the future fish fry when more are caught.

But while they were fishing I went walking. It was so nice to get out again in the sunshine after so many cold and snowy days this winter. It was almost springlike. Darla went everywhere with me. Bambi was busy trying to chew on fishing tackle, fishing poles...I even caught her with a beer and cold cup completely in her mouth! She almost got away with it if Camaron hadn't stopped her! Silly cow...

Going walking with Darla we set off in the woods near the pond. Bambi came running through the brush catching up to us after Amber chased her away from the fishing tackle again. So off we went, like in days past, the dog and the cow fighting over who leads the way.

I'm always on the hunt for feathers but that day I came across an odd sight. An old tree was just covered in scattered feathers, large ones. Bambi went right to it standing in the middle, sniffing..nuzzling the ground and the odd smell of the scene.

Something had killed a red tail hawk, a large full grown one and picked it clean leaving the carcass of bones still in the tree. I thought at first maybe someone had shot it the way the feathers looked like leftovers from a scattering explosion. But it was too clean for that. What was left behind was cleanly and meticulously picked over. A large cat would've been messier.

No, this was done by another predatory bird, one bigger and stronger than the victim of circumstance I had found. There was that sighting of an eagle weeks ago... Or maybe an owl, which is bigger than a red tail hawk.. Or maybe it was another male, fighting over territory, and one lost. There have been quite a few hawks around and even a younger one. Maybe the nesting family had some neighborly disputes... It's prime territory after all, a chicken coop nearby, puppies that look absolutely delicious to a hawk, and of course, a friendly cow.

Whatever happened, it was natural selection as nature should be. I collected feathers and the claws are left intact so maybe when those dry out I can make a necklace or something out of them. Discreetly of course, it's a protected bird no matter that it died naturally.

There's nothing wrong in how it died even though the trauma of the fight that ensued was quite evident. It was out of the ordinary but not at all unnatural. It's the natural order of things that the strong survive, the weaker lose so nature can keep the breeding pool that's left to incorporate the best qualities for future generations survival. In other words...shit happens.

In contrast to all of this, the next day I watched a program on PBS about a wildlife hunting "refuge" (but refuge isn't the word..) . It called itself "Green" in that people were allowed to go and hunt many different animals with either sedating dart guns, or arrows with sedation on the tips. What they "kill" can be posed with, pictures taken with, then doctored back up (hopefully) and set free to be "killed" again! To me that just seems completely wrong! They argued it was like "catch and release" in fishing. Technically, yes... but being set up, over and over to endure that seems like a barbaric form of refining the sport of killing to suit the masses.

Wild game that feeds a family is one thing, but i think that is carrying the sport a bit too far.

I like to think that the hawk that died fought proudly and fiercely (and from the looks of it he did) but at least had the fighting chance.