Balance of Nature

(Cooper’s Hawk)

The Cooper’s Hawk always looks like it means business. If one flies by, it passes like a speeding shadow, leaving you wondering if you saw anything at all.

One morning, a Cooper’s presence was confirmed by a ruckus on the street where I found two women shouting and chucking rocks up into a tree behind our house.

“What’s up?” I might have said, and they spilled out their righteous determination to spare the neighborhood’s baby birds from the dastardly attacks of the feathered demon above them. “It eats little birds,” they blurted with a fervor like long-skirted Jehovah Witnesses at my front door.

“But ladies,” I said, “it’s a bird too, hungry and maybe providing for its own young. Birds are what it eats. It’s only doing what it was meant to do.”

I’m not sure if they were dumbfounded at my seemingly heartless defense or embarrassed at their own outburst, but with heads together they wandered off down the street.

I imagined the shadow in the tree looking down, perplexed and shaking its head, if that’s something Cooper’s Hawks can do.