Preying

Fox in our backyard. Credit to Math Man.

It's not a misspelling, I assure you. This post is about primarily about preying, though perhaps there is something to be learned about praying as well.

On Friday, Mr. Math Teacher (the offspring formerly known as The Egg on this blog, and not to be confused with Math Man) and I were grilling vegetables on the driveway.  I look across the street to see our local fox in hot pursuit of a squirrel in my neighbor's front yard.  It did not end well for the squirrel, who was carried off.  It was fast. It was, at most, fifty feet away.

I was stunned by the raw power on display so close at hand. Living as I do in an inner-ring suburb, which hasn't been wild in more than two centuries, in a house with a tight roof and solid doors, I'm more insulated that I want to admit.  Wind, water, cold and heat are all seemingly under my control.  Too windy, close the windows.  Hot? Nudge up the A/C.  Ice and chill, bless the Lord?  Not so much.  I keep a bag of salt in the garage.

I wonder if this is part of why the desert fathers and mothers left the cities and made their way to caves in the arid wastes.  To grasp viscerally that they controlled nothing of import.  Not the winds or the waves, the predators that slithered through the door or pounced from above.  Neither life nor death.

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In other predator news, there is are owl pellets piled up on the roof by my bathroom window. Which I presume means an owl sits there from time to time. And what looked very much like a juvenile eagle was perched on the roof of the rectory garage yesterday.  #signsOfTheTimes