I’ll spare you the details—and me the embarrassment—of yesterday’s meals. Suffice it to say, if you forget that the salmon in under the broiler it turns out not very different from canned tuna. This might be one of those “note to self” moments.
If I had not banished myself to the porch, though, to eat the over-cooked salmon I wouldn’t have seen the hawk that swooped down out of the oak tree.
Let’s take a break here so I can tell you about my oak tree. Well, even though it sits about six feet from my porch I don’t think I can claim ownership to this majestic fauna. Debates have gone long into the night about whether it’s a white oak or a post oak and whether it’s two-hundred or three-hundred years old. I don’t really care. I’ve seen it lose half its branches to hurricanes and still look breathtaking. Now that it has branched out again—well, let’s just say I really like watching someone’s face when they see it for the first time.
OK, back to the hawk. There it was, diving down, then gliding up over the house next door and into the green space beyond. I lost track of how bad the salmon was and stared off waiting to see if it would magically appear again. No hawk. I thought I saw the branches of a tree across the street bend under the weight of a large bird but it could have been my imagination.
Then I heard this very high-pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeew, eeeeeeeeeeeew. Sounded just like a hawk but higher and very insistent. Then it dawned on me—Holy Moses!—I think that’s a baby hawk. I think I just saw its mother fly off to find it some food! I don’t even really care if it’s not true. The moment, the thought that it might be true, made up for any culinary disappointments of the day. Any leanings toward sulking I’d been toying with over this self-imposed restriction on my eating habits faded away.
I did have a stern talk with Miss Petunia Pittypat, puddy tat about the importance of remaining an indoor cat. There are predators out there, after all.
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