The Hawk Eye state

A hawk lives in the park near my house. We don’t really have hawks where I come from, so when I first saw him, it took me aback. At first, I thought it was a crow because the park near my house, the one at Hoglan School, is full of crows. Giant ones.

Now, the hawk always chills with the rest of the murder, and in the dying light of day when I usually find myself at the park, a darkly colored bird simply looks like every other darkly colored bird.

It wasn’t until the hawk perched into a tree near me that I got a good look at him.

“Holy crap,” I remember thinking. “That’s a hawk.”

Every time I go to the park, I see him there, prowling the grounds with the other birds. Sometimes he—or I suppose it could be a she; it’s a little sexist for me to assume it’s a male—perches on the soccer goal posts only inches away from a half dozen or so crows.

I don’t know why I assumed crows and hawks don’t get along, but they do. Maybe now I am being speciest. I guess there is a possibility the hawk, and his awesome hunting skills, is what draws the crows, who are largely scavengers after all.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the situation is, until yesterday when I saw a squirrel, I had never seen anything the hawk would consider food. It’s almost as if the birds are just hanging out in the park the way you or I would: for recreation.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but be amused by two entirely different types of birds mingling in harmony. There goes my notion that when you are Jet, you are a Jet all the way.

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