Tuesday, October 28th

Yesterday, at about 16:10 pm, I was delivering a van load of library books to the U of M library, West Bank of the Mississippi River. The library access is a vast underground cavern under the wooded hill of the River. I witnessed one of the most remarkable, brutal, horrifying and beautiful acts of nature that I have ever seen.

As I swooped suddenly into the hidden curved driveway, I drove within 20 feet of two birds face to face on the asphalt. They both looked at me as I pulled up to the access card reader. The prey was I believe a female. She was a yellow-shafted woodpecker. She looked sick and suffering. She was dying and as she looked at me, her eyes closed in death. I could make out the yellow under-wing feathers.

Also staring at me was a sharp-shinned hawk which had its talons impressed into the chest cavity of the female. Its claws stopped her heart, and the hawk held on until she was dead. By the time I was 8 feet away, the startled hawk dropped its prey and fled into the brush.

I went inside and unloaded the books. When I left the garage ten minutes later, the hawk had taken its prey to a safe location to consume, away from intruders.

It teaches one that nature is a harsh reality. Life and death are intertwined tightly. The death of the woodpecker allowed the hawk to eat and survive.

I have long loved yellow-shafted flickers. This was the best look at a sharp-shinned hawk that I have ever enjoyed.

It serves neither nature or humans well to romanticize nature. There is much brutality there. There is much love and devotion there too.

It serves neither nature or humans to mischaracterize nature as a malevolent jungle completely dog-eat-dog without redeeming value or promise.

Humans too grew out of nature. From it we carry life and death in all our actions. We carry good and evil potential too. The birds are innocent because their life and death struggle is instinct-guided.

The struggle for life and death among humans elicits good and evil assignation to actions taken and in how moral character is ranked because we are conscious and awake, not wholly or perhaps not even primarily guided by instinct.

We need to remember our roots to know how high the corn can grow.