There's a surprising amount of wildlife sharing the base with us. The usual ants, scorpions, ants, camel spiders, ants, crested larks, ants, sparrows, skinks, toads, ants, rock doves, bats, ants and other smaller critters (including ants) are omnipresent, but the larger fauna are represented, too -- the hunters. Feral cats live in some of the old fighting positions in the woods and hawks nest in the higher branches of the willows. Foxes live in the graveyard behind my hootch and trot around the airfield perimeter after nightfall -- I see one every so often sitting by the bombed-out watchtower on my trek back from the office, waiting for me to pass so he can continue his rounds.
This morning I was heading for my shortcut through the blast wall between my hootch and the main drag -- I got two steps from the opening in the wall and a sparrow flew from behind the wall and landed in the opening. I got one step from the opening and a falcon appeared from nowhere, pounced the sparrow -- and then looked at me. He snapped his head up, our eyes locked for less than a second and he vanished back behind the wall. Those amazing black eyes had enabled him to see the mottled dust-brown sparrow against the mottled dust-brown earth from hundreds of feet away.
Dazed, the sparrow hopped into a crevice in the blast wall.
I've developed a bit of a metaphysical bent over the years -- you don't wanna take the same path that I did to get there -- and I've always had a sort of empathy with animals. Here's a secret -- it's all about the eyes. Those of you who've never met me may find what I'm about to say a bit hard to swallow, but in the brief instant my human eyes met the twin pools of liquid midnight that were the falcon's, I *knew* what he was thinking.
"ooops"
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