About that time of day I'm a little sleep-drugged and wobbly. Chore One is to set the Mr. Coffee gurgling. In my altered state, that requires intense concentration
lest I omit the coffee, the filter, or the water. *
In the groggy process this morning something flickered in my port side peripheral vision, maybe twenty yards south of the uncurtained kitchen window, near the pickup. I registered two adolescent rabbits. No big deal; they're all over the place. Then something dark whooshed down from a nearby cottonwood.
The lucky bunny found shelter under the truck. The hapless sibling was last seen squirming in talons a dozen feet up and climbing.
The light was poor so I can't be sure, but I offer odds that the bandit was a rough-legged hawk even though they shouldn't be here in this season. They are scheduled to spend summer in the arctic north, making little hawks, but perhaps the settled science of global cooling offers an explanation.
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*(I know people who can bound out of bed and instantly whip out a bowline on a bight with the left hand while jotting down differential equations with the right. I hate them.)