Hi Tweeters

Yesterday (and I would have posted except no time) I was called to a window
in our New Westminster BC office by a colleague. He said "Large bird!" and
pointed to some plantings (I call all the big tropical-looking ones
dieffenbachia and hope no-one notices I don't know *what* the hell I'm
talking about when it comes to plants) on a second-story human-inaccessible
ledge in the atrium of our office building. I should say here that our
office building is open to the world in the basement, where there is a
station for the SkyTrain, Greater Vancouver BC's mass transit system. I
looked around the roots and made out a brown mass that resolved into an
immature Cooper's Hawk standing slightly stooped, very still, and looking
as fiercely lost for a clue as to what to do next as any bird I've ever
seen.

Like any modern pastel-color-infested atrium-style office building, there's
mirrors and reflecting glass abounding, a lethal House of Mirrors for any
lost bird to batter itself into, thinking escape lies in any direction the
sky shows, poor things. I thought the little dope had--with usual accipiter
singlemindedness, and what else but this kind of kamikaze effrontery helps
kill the large birds they slay? -- followed a pigeon or starling into the
station and thumped itself into the windows' lies, and was now standing
there with the worst headache recorded that afternoon in New Westminster
because it just hurt too damn much to do anything else.

Called Owl Rehab, who sent a truck and two volunteers. As the contact
person, I showed them where the bemused, mostly stockstill hawk had been
standing for about the last three or so hours, occasionally power-walking
in a peculiarly liquid stride, like a villain without a cloak skulking from
shadow to shadow muttering "Curses, curses--!", to the other end of the
planting if someone from another office window looked too closely.

Up the 15' ladder (pandering to an American readership here: 3 m to the
rest of ye) goes the volunteer. Up and out goes a flapping brown streak.
There's the sound of a fist softly striking a kettledrum. The volunteer
flashes a 'V For Victory' sign. What the hell...? "There's *two* of them!"
she calls. Two *hawks*? Visions of winter feeding territory squabbles and
clashing talons. Then I see the pigeon. It's sitting, as stupidly pleased
with itself as a pigeon ever looks, on the edge of the ledge of the
plantings at the other end of the atrium. No wonder it's smug: it's sitting
beside the flat-on-its-back body of the young Coop which had knocked itself
cold against the other set of windows, the ones outlooking the distance of
the Fraser River and the flats beyond, its escape, like ours, just another
illusion.

(Pause here for musings on life, escape, illusion, allusion, being 'dare I
eat a peach?' middle-aged in an office job in a pastel-colored office
building with lots of mirrors and reflecting glass, enough stuff here for a
good poem, maybe a short story, maybe even 'la moteef' of a workmanlike
novel of office manners if you're the kind of writer who likes to try
beating the throw to third base from what's usually a single to right ;-)

At the end of this struggle, it was the pigeon, aided by modern office
design and its own patience (and nothing about this seemed creepier than
the image of that hidden pigeon so frozen with terror that the hawk never
saw it, though within touching distance, for several hours), that was left
standing.

Guardedly happy ending so far. According to Owl Rehab today, the Coop was
concussed, and I'm sure the bells will ring for a day or two yet, but not
showing any sign of any more serious trauma. Appetite good (and I'm sure
there's a pigeon out there that's going to be looking over its shoulder for
a while). Possible release next week.

When I went for lunch, I saw high up over the river in the cold green and
mustard-colored sky a Peregrine begin its stoop, a long slanting fall into
the tangled bare trees along the dyke across the river, the kind of raw
winter picture that John Baker wrote about in his intense observations (The
Peregrine). Nice, I thought; a reward for some civic duty (although the
Peregrine's target would argue). And then to show the Lord is nothing if
not even-handed, I spent the next two hours trying to deal with The Client
>From Hell.

Cheers

Michael Price The only alien planet is Earth.
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net - J. G. Ballard