This story, accessed through the link pasted below, comes from my alma mater, the University of Maryland, and its online version of the campus newspaper, The Diamondback. It offers gruesome details, and a rather unpleasant photo, of a campus hawk devouring a squirrel.
Swooping in for the squirrels - News
What's the point of such blow-by-blow detail? And there's a photo, made even more reprehensible by this ignorant quote from an onlooker:
"We were watching the hawk and all the stress kind of flows away," Volack said. "Everyone's attention was taken off of their problems to watch an act of nature."
Sure, watching "squirrel guts" (as one observer put it) splattered all over the place is a big stress reliever. We should all do it more often when we get strung out. In fact, let's offer up a few squirrels on a regular basis to the campus hawks because, God knows, campus life is so damn stressful.
I'm not often ashamed to be a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park. But right now I feel like turning my diploma so it faces the wall.
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4 comments:
I suppose I'm unduly stressed. Rather than watch a Cooper's hawk enjoy a meal by the bird/critter feeders here, I encouraged the hawk to leave (by taking a few photos).
Stressedly,
--Chet
Ugh.
I scare away the hawk that lives around my neighborhood. Got to keep things safe for squirrels.
Disgraceful. So sad. Folks often say to me 'oh, u luv nature, r u watching (some nature show) on TV 2nyt?' & I say 'no, I don't want 2 see animals killing each other' & of course they say 'but it's just nature' & I'm like 'yeah, but it's not in MY nature' I am human. And as such (unlike the hawk, who knows the poor squirrel only as food) I have something that helps me tell good from evil. It's called an imagination.
I find no beauty in this either. It is a part of nature I would rather not see. There are a lot of "natural" things that people such as you and I would rather not look at - it doesn't make us any less of a nature lover, it just means we cannot tolerate predation of animals we care about.
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