This morning, I was ushered into a new day by witnessing an exhibition of the cruelty inherent in nature. My suitemate demanded that I take a break from studying, then led me to his bedroom and told me to look out the window. At eye-level, in a tree about ten feet away from where I was standing in the comfort of a college dorm, a large hawk was methodically devouring what once was another bird – now a lifeless mess of scarlet-stained white feathers and dangling feet. The hawk had such a noble, distinguished look to it, striking regal poses in between pecks. It was a painfully beautiful experience; despite general disgust and sympathy for the mangled prey, I couldn’t help but watch and admire the hawk’s ice-cold precision. Killing was just business as usual, like it used to be for humans, before cultural advances made it so that I wince at the thought of coming face-to-face with my dinner. Now I dissociate my steak from the cow it used to be a part of, in an attempt to avoid the overwhelming negative emotions that accompany the idea of killing another innocent living thing.
The hawk ripped the feathers off one-by-one from what I think may have been a pigeon, getting them out of the way of the raw meat it sought and raining them down onto the feather graveyard below. I stood and shivered in my boxer shorts and a white t-shirt, appalled and enthralled by the sound of snapping bone and sinew. The hawk maintained a death grip on the late pigeon, using its strong legs and prehistoric claws to flail the disemboweled corpse around and find the perfect angle for tearing off chunks of flesh. I was watching a live National Geographic special with a strong parental advisory.
