| Thursday, April 19, 2007 |
| CSI |
When I got home from work this evening around 9:00 (I know - I hit 40 hours sometime Wednesday evening. I am SO going to Happy Hour tomorrow, it's been one of the hardest weeks of my career, stress wise. Thanks Zenchick).
Anyway, I opened my back gate and was immediately drawn to the center of my backyard, where all the signs pointed to a fierce and mighty struggle. It looked like a CSI crime scene. There were huge amounts of feathers laying in a depression in the center of the yard about 2 feet in circumference. Down feathers, pin feathers, and entire wing feathers. At the epicenter, were some feet, a few bones, a beak / skull, and that was pretty much the end of an unfortunate pigeon.
The perp was most likely a Peregrine Falcon. Peregrine Falcons are fastidious eaters. They do not like feathers. They pluck their prey completely clean before they eat it. This same scene happened in my yard about 4 years ago, during the big blizzard of 2003. In the height of the storm, a large Peregrine Falcon sat on my garden wall, ripping the feathers out of another pigeon. It was really ghastly, since all the feathers were landing on the white, snowy landscape, and there was a spray of crimson over the snow. I have photos of that - but it was before I got a digital camera, so no online pics.
Baltimore has a number of nesting Peregrine Falcons downtown. There's even a children's book about them.
The other damage was inside my house. Since this crime was committed in broad daylight, my cats were looking out the big picture window into the yard, and the sight of this frenzied feathered activity apparently drove them crazy. They trashed a screen in the window trying in vain to get at the bird massacre happening a few feet away.
So, it looks like Saturday is going to be a yard cleanup day, with a trip to the hardware store to build new screens..... |
posted by Broadsheet @ 10:00 PM   |
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| 4 Editorial Opinions: |
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Wait, wait, what happy hour? How come I'm not invited? Dammit! :P
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1. I wasn't invited either. What the?
2. Gross, gross, gross. Did I say... gross?
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It's just Zenchick and I!!! We work at the same place and ran into each other in the parking garage, and one look at me told her I was having a bad week.
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Are you going to keep the skull as a conversation piece?
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Wait, wait, what happy hour? How come I'm not invited? Dammit! :P