CROW, UNLUCKY By Andrew Hidas What were the odds of it being this crow in particular and not one of its hundreds of brethren now squawking futilely on its behalf as its hapless, now limp carcass is being carried furious and fast across the lawns of Jacqueline Drive, hard in the talons of this hawk who passes within yards of my bicycle as the victim’s fellow crows dive bomb every determined flap of its wings? Every crow spared but this one, dead, snuffed, just like that, a meal in the waiting if the hawk can elude the battalion of…
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THE HOPE IN WILDNESS By Andrew Hidas “In God’s wildness is the hope of the world,” wrote John Muir while tramping through Alaska on a long mission to meet that hope on its own terms. Not to snub the majesty of perfect sunsets, Muir might hasten to add, but is there a nobler expression of divine engagement, of a super-charged world ripe and overflowing with portent and awe, than a severely blackened sky followed by lightning cascading across its canvas? Or even in suburbia, biking in a hot…
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Returning from a run at the school track around the corner, I behold a small gathering of crows in the middle of the street, all of them looking down, as they tend to do, with their uncanny radar for discerning food in the urban wilderness. The object of their attention looks to be a small tree branch at first, but I can’t fathom why that would occupy them so concertedly, so curiosity bids me to intrude upon their circle. Which is when I come across an obviously besieged alligator lizard, its mouth agape in an “I will bite and swallow…