My neighbours leave for work at 8.30am.
At 8.49 this morning, having worked late last night, I was heading for the shower when I glanced out of the window.
There, in their garden, was a grey heron.
A beautiful, slender creature, 3 feet in height, helping himself to a carp out of the little pond in their garden.
I grabbed a camera and photographed him as he stood over his prize, flip-flapping for its life on their back lawn.
Then he picked it up and shook it.
And then he thrust his razorbill beak upwards, extending neck and head to the morning sky, and swallowed the carp whole, standing quite still as his throat expanded to allow its doubtless still wriggling form to sink to its final resting place in the juices of his stomach.
The point of the story?
Stay home and work freelance. You'll never know what happens in your back yard while you're sitting in that traffic jam.
I watch my neighbours' cat do the same thing, and think how ludicrous it is to spend hundreds of pounds on a persian blue puss, and the same on the ornamental coi carp it is going to spend weekdays attempting to fish out of the pond.
9-5ers are weird. :)
Posted by: Rebecca | Sunday, 18 May 2008 at 06:01 PM