Ducks and a Hawk

This past evening the first noteworthy snowfall left the tree branches coated in white sheets, and the sidewalks and streets are iced and slippery. Actually, I find it both beautiful and annoying. Too soon the snow will become brown and black with dirt and yellowed with the urine of dogs. Even now the temperature rests above freezing and the snow melts apace. Frost wrote that nothing gold can stay. But the earth is quiet. In the park where an immense housing development is under construction there exists areas of architecturally designed waterways and also a number of areas where water has collected from the melting winter’s snow and summer rains are now stilled and covered with a thin sheen of ice. This has made the locations unlivable for the ducks and even some geese, the latter of whom I am not fond because they defecate all over the walkways. No ducks were visible this morning as I walked. Though only two days ago I had seen a dozen ducks swimming and breakfasting rather contentedly, I might say, in one of the natural craters where the water had collected, today those places were inaccessible. When would the ducks feel cold, I wondered. Where do the ducks go in the winter, Holden Caulfield wondered.
            Yesterday as I walked down Montreal Avenue away from the park I observed a hawk in the side brush. The bird was sitting atop what I considered to be a No Trespassing sign, but the hawk didn’t seem disturbed or deterred from its perch in the brush. The hawk didn’t seem unsteady though I walked against the wind unsteadily on the icy sidewalk. I watched the bird for a minute or so: the hawk wore its dark feathers proudly on the dark cloudy morning, its white proud breast puffed out almost insolently, I thought. Then the hawk turned its head and noticed me, and then it turned away, lifted its tail feather and shot out a stream of urine or feces and took off into flight.  I didn’t take the hawk’s actions personally, but it did cross my mind that sometimes when I am going out for a jaunt or an errand I often go first to the bathroom. I know that the hawk will not migrate to warmer climates and that it will hunt for food throughout the winter: perhaps it was then headed to hunt out a meal. But this particular hawk evacuated so proudly I could not help but admire it.