Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Today’s blog is part two from yesterday. In that blog, I wrote of the Station fire by our house a few years back and mentioned that my friends and I had a hard time returning to walking that mountain due to the emotions surrounding the devastating loss of wildlife and vegetation.
But several of us were determined to reunite with our mountain and took to walking it as a group. Somehow, being with friends in an environment where literally every living thing was seriously charred made the experience less sad.
Where we once encountered squirrels, fox, deer and other forms of wildlife, none, and I do mean none, remained. It was eerie walking those hills under those circumstances. And we had to keep a constant watch where our feet landed, as the trails were heavily laden with charred tree branches.
Spring dawned, and with it, we continued our walks in the hills. And although none of us is very fond of snakes, we were elated to see them make their way up to the trail from their underground nests.
And speaking of nests, we were equally pleased to see hawks, one of my favorite birds, return to the area. But, for the hawks, there was a problem. They like to make their giant nests at the tops of fully mature healthy trees, so as to keep a keen eye out. But due to the fires, not a single tree remained on the mountain that wasn’t burned branchless or completely killed.
These are not the conditions hawks seek when planning to build a nest. So the winged raptors opted for the next best thing—to make their nests in the closest available suitable trees. Those of course, happened to be in our neighborhood. And the hawks seemed to especially favor the mature trees on our property—all sixty plus of them.
So hawks made their nests in our trees and those close to our home, and all was good, until they got hungry. Hawks are especially fond of eating snakes—rattlesnakes, to be exact. Our charred remains of our mountains had a bumper crop hatching out. And with no vegetation to hide them from flying predators, the snakes were easy pickings.
Now all this is fine and dandy and part of the whole circle of life. I get that and don’t interfere. But, when this circle of life began threatening the safety of my hiking friends and me, things took on a different tone.
Allow me to paint you a picture. There I was, walking along with a group of six to eight other women, carefully monitoring where I was placing my feet to as not to trip over a charred branch or inadvertently step on a rattlesnake, crawling amongst said branches. Actually, I was doing a pretty good job of this and maintaining a good conversation, until I heard the distinct sound of a pissed off rattlesnake.
Scanning the ground, my eyes searched for where the snake was—we all did. None of us saw anything. But the sound of rattling was definitely getting closer and more insistent. That’s when I happened to look up. Not sure why, but I did. And what to my amazed eyes did appear but a hawk, flying about twenty-five feet above my group of hikers, carrying a very much alive and irritated rattlesnake, which was doing its damnedest to let the hawk know it was not happy.
Now it’s bad enough when you have to watch every step you take so as not to step on a snake, but when one appears directly overhead and rather close, chaos is sure to ensue. And it did. My merry band of hikers quickly moved from under the circling hawk. But as soon as we did, the hawk changed its flight pattern so it would be flying directly over our heads again.
Okay, not sure about the rest of you, but having a pissed off rattle snake fall out of the sky and land on my head is so not on my top ten list!
We hikers moved this way and that, each time, the hawk would readjust his circling.
What the hell?!
Frustrated and feeling trapped, I looked up at the hawk and said, “Okay, really. Isn’t there someplace else you could fly?”
Apparently, the hawk didn’t appreciate my questioning where he could fly. For right then, he looked down at us and let go of the snake.
Holy shit!
Pandemonium broke out, as my group of hikers scattered every which way, the snake falling to the ground where we’d just been. And the hawk? He kept circling.
Bastard! Somebody could get hurt that way.
My friends and I managed to skirt our way around the seriously pissed off rattle snake and continued on our way.
A couple of weeks later, a reenactment of the previous hawk and angry snake scenario played out. Only this time, we weren’t up in the hills, we were only a few blocks from my house. Chaos erupted, angry words were shouted at the hawk, and then another snake was dropped where we’d just been.
Beginning to take this personally and rethink my love of hawks!
As before, we managed to avoid the snake. This time, however, the snake was seriously injured—near death. And the hawk, as soon as we got far enough away where it felt safe, swooped down and picked up the snake and flew off.
That does it!
When I got home, following my walk, I looked up the hunting habits of hawks and learned that they kill snakes by dropping them on the ground until they are sufficiently dead.
Okay, things are beginning to look more like the normal cycle of life, here.
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