cooper’s hawk


  cooper’s hawk 
  Originally uploaded by jenijen

Yesterday morning I got up before 6.  It was still pretty dark outside — darker than it looks in this photo.  I saw what I thought was a big cat on the back fence, and I walked closer to the window to see what it was up to.  Turns out it was this cooper’s hawk.  She perched there for a few minutes, flew away, and then came back to finish checking things out. 

We’ve lived in our house for almost six years and that’s the first hawk I’ve seen in the back yard.  The wall behind the fence is part of a two story apartment building, so I was surprised to see her there so close to so many people.

A couple of hours later I drove by the cemetery I pass every day on my way to work.  It’s just a few blocks from my house, and since I grew up in this neighborhood, I’ve been watching it from car windows for over 25 years.  I’ve walked through it, too.  People I knew are buried there.

Today, for the first time that I can remember, I saw a backhoe digging a grave.  Maybe I just noticed because it was near the street, just on the other side of the very high hedge that fences in the cemetery grounds. 

I drove by again at the end of the day — there were bright flowers in bunches and wreaths stacked so high they showed over the top of the hedge.  I wonder if the things that I think are unusual in my daily routine are really out of the norm, or if they’re happening all the time and I simply don’t notice.

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