Intolerable cruelty

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While deadheading the columbine, I noticed a brown caterpillar clinging to a stem, it's body covered by the pupae of parasitic wasps. The caterpillar was motionless, past its misery, mercifully.

At dusk, I noticed a young bird sitting quietly in the neighbor's grass. He was a big fellow with black feathers and hooked beak. I watched and listened for his mother but he was alone. The next morning, the bird lay on his side, motionless. An ant crawled up his leg.

Nature can be so cruel.


When I looked today, the bird was a handful of black feathers tossed among clumps of green turf. That silent trace will be completely erased on the next mowing with the John Deere.