Cruel world.
I know I haven't shared anything in 8 million years and they're probably going to kick me off of the internet for not participating, but... I have something interesting to share today.
So we went up to the garden (our community garden set in the woods) and one of our fellow gardeners said, "Look, a parrot!" There was this beautiful fluffy-headed green parrot just squawking away happily on a branch not far from us. It was really friendly and would swoop down to be near us.
I figured it was someone's pet and probably had only recently gotten out of its cage. I thought we could catch it for sure, because it was so friendly. While a couple of other friends who were there worked on trying to get it to fly down and land on their arms, I went home to get our cat carrier so we'd have somewhere to put it.
When I got back from the house, my friends told me that while I was gone, it swooped down once like it was going to land on my friend's arm, but it flew right up into her face and she kind of jumped back and yelled and it flew up into another tree.
So we walked over to that tree and were looking up at for a few seconds, when all of a sudden a huge red-tailed hawk swooped down over our heads and snatched the poor parrot right out of the tree!!!!
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The poor parrot was squawking and screaming and the hawk flew low onto another tree branch further away in the woods! I immediately started sobbing. I had this visceral gut reaction that just killed me. Two of my friends chased after the hawk with some rocks, but when they came back they said they saw it with the parrot, and the parrot had been motionless. At least it died quickly.
I know that it was just part of life, but it was so sudden and so violent that it was really quite traumatic. Also, this poor parrot was so defenseless and naive. And none of us thought that would happen, even though earlier someone commented, "Oh, I just saw a hawk land in a tree over there!" The parrot probably attracted the hawk from the get go, what with its squawking and swooping. Poor, poor bird.
Before all that happened, I took pictures of the parrot, because I fully expected that we'd be able to catch it, and I imagined posting pictures at all the local vet clinics and pet stores, and finding its owner. It was such a cute bird...
