Nary was there ever one like that one. No my friend. Not like her at all. Van Buren was a special one that’s for sure. This past Tuesday, in fact, was the anniversary of her passing. Van Buren had been the finest falcon I ever saw. We let her loose every morning on the golf course and watched her go. Them starlings never saw her coming, she just swooped out of the sky and snatched em up one by one, but then she got a taste of bunny in her and after that she wouldn’t chase no more starlings. Bunnies were all she wanted. Well the rabbit population went down considerably I can tell you that, but the starlings rebounded quite rapidly and then they was everywhere again. So we had to bring in another falcon. We thought that would be wise, so I called my falconer friend over in High Point. And the next weekend we went over and had a look, and that’s where we found Mr Patterson. Well, we haggled a bit over the price, and then the hood was out over his head and he went into the lorry and off we drove.
Mr Patterson came to get along just fine with Van Buren after a while but it wasn’t easy at first. There was confusion, you know what I mean. As certainly there would be. They were working things out, the relationships, the dynamics, the roles, see. Are we rivals, friends, mates, a couple? Do we hunt together or compete? Or just leave each other alone. I’ll take my area and you go to yours. And of course that’s the natural way things work out usually. I’ll take my spot and you can have yours, until something happens and then one or the other will pop their head up and turn to look, and say to themselves, what’s going on over there, then? Then their interest is peaked.
Then the other one will play it coy usually. “Nothing go on over here, just killed me a family of rats is all. What you got?”
“Who, me? You didn’t see? You don’t see this pile of bunny bones sittin’ in front of me here?”
And on they go, so and so, this and that, until they’re dining together every Sunday.
Van Buren put it out there at first. “Do you like gopher?”, she asked. “What, gopher? Meat is meat to me. Carrion flesh, it’s all the same”, replied Patterson. “Are you joking? All the same?” Van Buren was incensed or at least pretended to be, one could never be sure with a falcon like that, her personality especially, one had trouble discerning sometimes. Anyway, she put on like she couldn’t believe that another bird thought that prey of all kinds were all the same taste. What a dull life, she thought. All we really do, when we’re not sitting on a lamp post, staring out into the horizon contemplatively, all we really do is fly around in circles looking for things to kill and eat. There should at least be some joy in the eating part. Just because we don’t have access to sauces and herbs and spices doesn’t mean we can’t have a little enjoyment and take a little pleasure in the subtle differences in the taste of our victims when we are pecking at their bodies and ripping apart their muscles and organs. That’s the whole enjoyment of it.”
Anyway, turns out, they did share a gopher meal that Sunday back at the house. Smelled awful if you ask me. Pretty soon like, there they go flying around, hunting together, and they sure cleaned house on the golf course, that’s for sure. Those were lovely days.
THE MOSSY BOG 