I was sitting in my backyard on Sunday when I heard a thud behind me. Now, I live in the middle of the city and my backyard is quite small. It is also surrounded by brick buildings, meaning that sound is a bit amplified. I looked over my shoulder and there was a pigeon lying on my barbeque (not on the grill rack, but on the lid, thankfully). Although pigeons are plentiful in my neighborhood, they don’t generally drop out of the sky. I carefully moseyed over to see what was going on with said pigeon and could see it was bleeding from various puncture wounds but was still alive. Rather than risk a pigeon attack to my bare skin, I went inside to get some oven mitts. I know this is a strange choice but it’s all I could think of.

On my way back out I peeked out of a window to see if anything had happened with my pigeon guest. Well, it was much worse off than when I left. It was being eaten by a hawk. A huge hawk. Alive. On my barbeque. In my backyard. In the middle of the city. First thought: ICK. Second thought: this is kind of cool. Yes, I watched the hawk eat the pigeon (there was no chance of CPR or anything else to save its life). Yes, it was fascinating. Yes, I feel a little bit bad but there wasn’t really anything I could do to save the pigeon.

End result(s): (1) the pigeon carcass went into the dumpster, carried by my dishwashing glove clad hands (dish-washing gloves are more easily washed than oven mitts); (2) the hawk had a great lunch; and, (3) I continue to wonder where the hawk went after eating and if I’ll see it again. It was, as I already mentioned, huge and it seems improbable that it would live in the city. Certainly stranger things have happened. For example, a puppy or small child could have landed on my barbeque. I admit it; I'm a bad person because I would value those lives more than a pigeon's and, in either of those situations, I would have fought the hawk. With my oven mitts.

But that would be a much different story.