The Ends of Days and Small Creatures
It surprises me how infrequently we come across dead animals and birds. When we do, the small bodies sometimes have an unsettling beauty.
A juvenile cormorant curls gracefully in a ditch by the side of the road
A tiny velvety mole, possibly a victim of Esau’s vigilante activities, lies on the grass in eastern Long Island
In Central Park, near Frederick Douglass Plaza, a flash of brilliant green and yellow at the base of a tree reveals itself to be, not a discarded plastic toy, as I first thought, but the body of a parakeet.
Days end on Long Island
over the Hudson
and, most strangely and spectacularly, in Dallas, where the divided sky lingers until full dark
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Tags: dead birds, dead mole, juvenile cormorant, Long Island sunset, NYC parakeet, sunset Dallas, sunset over Hudson
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August 12, 2010 at 12:12 pm
I started reading your blog around the time of the coyote sightings this past winter. It’s a real pleasure! I have a dog too, and we’ve seen some tiny moles scampering (away from my dog) in the park. Before your post, I assumed they were baby mice, due to a misconception that blind animals don’t run so fast. Moles do!
August 12, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Ah, but that little dead mole was discovered not in a NYC park, but out on the eastern shore of Long Island. So your little urban scamperers may indeed be mice. It’s made me curious, though, so I will try to find out whether we do indeed have moles in Central Park — and whether they scamper! Thank you so much for your kind words, and for visiting.
August 5, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Unsettling to be sure, but beautiful. Why do these images not repulse me like the ones from the Gulf? Maybe because they had a fairer fight to the death, or maybe not….
August 4, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Brilliant and beautiful. Daddy-O
August 4, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Death is only scary if we think it is not a part of life, but, pace all the fools looking for immortality, in fact it is part of life, the last part, in the individual sense, but also a continuation of life, with the recycling of material back into the ecosystem.
Still, a moment of sadness is in order. I feel the most for the parrot, stolen from a far off place for someone’s vanity and ego, or, as obscene, bred for profit.