Age-old story: two kiskadees sweep, cut through a clear morning sky, irritating more than harming a hawk soaring low over the trees and television antennas sprouting out of the zinc sod of rooftops in some part of
Background this transient cyclical drama, this (to borrow a phrase from a certain gimmicky yet critically venerated author) “infinite rehearsal”, construct a history for it and we can imagine, among other things, a time when there were no television antennas.
The two smaller birds dive-bomb the larger stronger bird with an almost suicidal fervour, interrupting the slower, nobler creature, stalling it along its daily business for a second or so at a time. To the earthbound observer, this seems an injustice of sorts, this torment above the power lines.
A young man told me once, with no small amount of vindicatory triumph in his voice, that he saw a hawk pursued by two kiskadees suddenly alight atop a television antenna and, with one swift twist of its gallant head, catch one of its tormentors in its great beak; it of course then proceeded to feast on the bird while its cowardly accomplice flew away.
The years of watching similar pursuits have never been as kind to me. Always, with what I’ve come to realise as an anticlimax, the kiskadees veer away before the hawk, that lesser eagle, lands; flying back, as perhaps only my imagination embellishes, to their mutual nest and their remaining chicks.
Copyright 2008 Ruel Johnson
1 comment:
(Pssst, so who's the hawk and who are the kiskadees? Come on, fess up. I swear I won't blog about it.)
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