One of the things self really enjoys doing is looking at the posts of other WordPress bloggers on the week’s theme.
This week’s theme was BEGINNING.
Self was looking at the pictures on the blog Death as a New Beginning. They were of a dead hawk. The hawk was stiff; its eyes were wide open. Never mind that self didn’t get why a dead hawk would be a new beginning, but she was just fascinated by the pictures.
There was a little bit of red matter in the dead hawk’s beak.
And it reminded her of the only time she has seen a squirrel up close: it was in her living room. When self first caught sight of it (right next to the sofa), she thought it was a stuffed toy. It wasn’t moving at all. She stepped up close and looked, and noticed that it had teeth. Sharp teeth. Ugh. So this was not a stuffed toy (Never mind what a stuffed toy would be doing in her living room. Hold that thought. Self is a writer, so her mind does tend to make big narrative leaps). And that’s when she noticed blood on the squirrel’s teeth.
You know, it’s funny how, when you think of squirrels, you really don’t think of them as animals. No, you think of them as animate stuffed toys, prancing about your yard. In reality, however, they have a smell, they have sharp claws, and they also have extremely sharp teeth. And how this dead squirrel happened to get into self’s house was really a mystery — that is, until she belatedly noticed that Gracie, her beagle, was nearby, looking up at self with an expression that self could only describe as triumph. Yes, it was Gracie who dragged this poor dead squirrel to the living room, as a kind of trophy.
EEEKKK!!!!!
Self’s scream was ear-splitting. The Man had to exert himself to get a shovel from the shed and bag the poor creature.
Today, self was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when she happened to look up — it was such a beautiful day — and she saw a whole flock of birds nesting in the trees.
She heard a lot of chirps and tweets yesterday, but she couldn’t be sure the sounds weren’t coming from her neighbor’s parakeets — he keeps about a dozen of them in the shed right next to self’s fence. But it is so nice to listen to birds, no matter what the source.
So today, self looked up, and — Holy Cow! — so many birds! And they were all aiming for her bird feeders, it seemed like (She has 2). She loved watching the birds swooping about, resting momentarily on a branch and then darting lower. From the purposeful way in which the birds were congregating on the trees in her yard, self knew they had specifically come to gorge themselves on the sunflower seeds and cracked corn she fills her bird feeders with. She couldn’t take any pictures because the tree-tops are far, far away. But — so nice to have birds to look at. Wouldn’t you agree, dear blog readers?
Stay tuned.
