Skulls -- Part 1 (maybe there'll be a part 2)

This post might not be really suited for a blog named Clemency, which is supposed to be all about "nice stuff".  For some, at least, it might seem misplaced.  For me... well, I'm not sure, I go back and forth.

Skulls.

For some, a symbol of death.  For others just a cool design rampant in pop culture.  For me skulls are both of those, but more importantly, I find them to be an underappreciated aspect of the Creator's amazing design of living things.

I've collected "skulls" since I was a child.  The first was a dried-out lizard's head that I found on the ground (which I still have).  It looked so interesting, so strange, so fascinating.  As I recall, his jaws were frozen in a twist which revealed some tiny lizard teeth.  His scaly skin remained intact.  If I held the head in my fist I could fool someone into thinking I still held a living creature.  Yet he was dead.

Over the years it's been an on-again, off-again hobby.  Lately it's been very "off-again", for a long time in fact.  I still have the box with my collection, but it's been some time since I opened it up and shared it with visitors.

Today I got a call from an old, old friend from the wayback days, Philip.  We've known each other since we were little, but during our early twenties we really hung out together.  There were four of us, including my brother Paul, Phil, and another friend named Mike, and we did lots of things together.  Anyway, Phil asked me today if I still had the skull collection.

That reminded me that about 3 weeks ago I was walking through the nearby college on a Saturday, dressed in a suit.  Still dressed up from the morning's field service, for some reason I'd taken the bus home to the nearest stop, and needed to walk through the campus to get home. 

Up ahead in the distance I could see a pair of crows in the air, harrassing a third bird by using greater speed and turning ability to continually fly past it at close range.  The third bird flew steadily and landed on top of another lamp post, and the crows also landed nearby.

My thoughts drifted for a few moments as I continued walking, forgetting about the birds.  As I drew closer, however, one of the crows sitting on the streetlight began chirping in a very odd way.  It sounded just like the noise a keyless remote for an automobile sounds:  "chirp chirp".  Later I did some research and found that crows "can be masterful mimics. They have been trained to count aloud up to seven, and some crows have learned more than 100 words and up to 50 complete sentences; others have been known to mimic their owners’ voices in order to call dogs and taunt horses" (source).  So evidently that guy or girl has spent some time around cars.

As if that wasn't fascinating enough, suddenly I saw the "third bird", a hawk of some sort, take off from his lamp post and head toward the trees south of the road I was walking on. Immediately "Chirp-Chirp" also took flight and began giving chase.  An instant later I felt and heard the sound of a "whoosh-whoosh-whoosh" as Chirp-Chirp's mate flew just over my shoulder from behind me to join in the behavior, which I later discovered is termed "mobbing".

Feeling peaceful with no sense of urgency about having to be home at any particular time, I set off on foot across the field toward the trees, where I could see that the hawk had now landed.  The crows too had landed somewhere, but my eye was on the hawk.

Unfortunately when I was about halfway between the road and the hawk, he took off and disappeared behind even more trees.  Since I was now basically in the brush already, rather than hike back to the road, I decided to try and take a shortcut over to Fury Lane where I could enter the complex where we live.  Going carefully to try and avoid snagging my suit, I worked my way around bushes, and even found a safe narrow crossing for the creek that runs through the southeast corner of the college grounds.



~~ NOTE: This blog entry is about to finally arrive at its main point. ~~



Suddenly in a small clearing I looked down and saw the half-decomposed carcass of what I reckoned must be a dead coyote.  He lay on his side, and part of his skin was gone exposing some ribs.  

That was three weeks ago.

Now it's 3:43pm on a Monday afternoon.  The dishes are done.  The colored wash is probably in its rinse cycle by now.  I should be going online to take this course on "financial aid" which is required before making an appointment with the Financial Aid office at the school I'm considering attending.  However, I'm overwhelmed by curiousity to see if that coyote is still there... and if it might be appropriate that I make another acquisition to my macabre collection.