A pristine Red-tailed Hawk tail feather.

A couple of days before I found that feather I was walking in the neighborhood where my son's taking tennis lessons and saw a Red-Tailed Hawk catch a mole or some other critter in a front yard. The hawk began eating the mole not more than 10 yards from me. I froze. It saw me but kept feeding. I watched for five minutes or more, fascinated that this hawk ignored me and kept feeding. It finally looked over at me, picked up the critter and casually flew off.

I was riding uptown on a fun ride by myself and was thinking about that hawk two days prior. I saw an orange flash in my peripheral vision but ignored it at first. I rode about 50 yards, stopped and turned around. Something made me turn around. I can't explain it. There was heavy traffic and when I got back to where I saw the orange flash, there it was. A perfect Red-tailed Hawk feather lying on the street. Those things just don't drop out of the sky, not in the city, and no, there wasn't a dead carcass anywhere.

I took it home and have it in my office. It holds a lot of significance to me. It wasn't a coincidence. It means something but I don't know what.


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