On Instinct . . .

From my kitchen window yesterday, I saw a hawk. Or maybe it was a falcon. Anyways, it was most certainly a bird of prey . . . my ornithology is severely lacking. He or she swooped and glided from tree to telephone pole to roof outside my kitchen window for about ten minutes or so before flying off to Ra-knows-where.

Much later in the day . . . or at least later enough for it to be dark out, I nearly stumbled upon a coyote. I was, of course, a short stones throw from my kitchen window. The coyote, as it turns out, was one of a pair-which may or may not be considered a pack . . . my varmint knowledge is severely lacking. The pair (or small pack) of coyotes loped a few loops around my neighbors yard-literally steps from my kitchen window-for a few minutes before gracefully hopping a five-foot fence and dashing off to Willie-knows-where.

Three hunters . . . hungry.

Meanwhile, on the other side of my kitchen window . . . sits a refrigerator. Inside the refrigerator sat a pig, or rather, parts of a pig. Delicious parts. Had any of the three hunters known what was just on the other side of my kitchen window, surely they would have called out in their native cries something resembling envy. Often, when I'm enjoying delicious pork (pig in the field, pork on the table), I am reminded of an old job I had in Chicago. This job site was located next to a pig-into-pork plant, and every morning when I arrived, I'd see truckloads of pigs going in, and subsequent foodstuffs going out in the eve.

I had fantasies of one day throwing open the doors of the plant and letting the pigs free. These flights of fancy were born more from whimsy than any sort of love or responsibility. These fanciful flights of fantasy often ended with the sad realization that, in all probability, none of the fancied mayhem would occur. The pigs would most likely not run amok through the streets of south Chicago. The pigs-being pigs-would most likely not be desperate to escape.

Sometimes, I feel like those sad little piggies. Unknowingly being stripped and processed in a plant with all the other little piggies . . . and an unknown and whimsical freedom just a cloven skip away.

Sometimes, I feel like the coyotes. Skittish and hungry. Wild enough to be sort of wonderful, but too slovenly to be considered majestic. Where the line between hunting and scavenging is blurry at best . . .

And sometime, I feel like that hawk . . . if it was a hawk. Using my hawks-eye view to see so far! Where fight and flight don't have to be mutually exclusive . . . Where instinct keeps the belly full.

On a final random note-while watching the hawk perched atop a telephone pole yesterday, he or she suddenly took an enormous shit directly onto the most expensive car on the street. Was that instinctual?