Spring is a season of courtship and nesting and fluffy little baby creatures. But all this effort takes energy: the mothers need calories to produce the young, and then to feed them. And eggs and offspring are helpless little packets of calories themselves, which may feed other young. So spring is a time of birth but also of death; while some bodies are being knitted together, other bodies are taken apart.
The first murder, I witnessed. Hearing a cardinal outside my window, I looked out to see what the ruckus was. It was eating what could be a large bug, but was so green it could be a clump of vegetable matter. What looked like two oblong leaves were picked off and flung. Then the bird had something plump in its beak, which it thrashed, ejecting something wet. Beak full to overflowing, it flew off.
In the time it took me to get outside to investigate, ants had already begun taking advantage of the leftovers: part of a head, a couple of legs, the two leaf-like wings, plus two slenderer wings that unfolded from accordion-like pleats to shimmering gossamer. Rest in peace, praying mantis.
The second crime scene was fresh but quiet. Walking the path around the pond near my house, I came upon a few fluffs of down on the trail. Then, a few clumps of feathers, small and brown with black spots, then longer grey feathers. The tableau got a bit messier; I spied red on the ground. Pieces of bone with scraps still attached, flies buzzing around. A small glossy organ the color of a garnet—the heart? A worm-like coil of innard. Then—the head. Probably the size of my thumb above the joint, blending in with the gravel and leaves. Buffy brown feathers, dark thin beak, grey eyelid closed: a mourning dove, probably the victim of a hawk.
The third was only a whisper of death. Up the path on the hillside, on a bed of pine needles, so small they’d be almost invisible except for their bright yellow, was a collection of infinitesimal feathers, smaller than my pinkie fingernail. White at the fuzzy end, yellow at the top, and that’s all there was to them. A couple dozen at least, a few clumps matted together, one wing feather. Their color still arresting the eye, speaking out: “I was here.”
In another day, the evidence would be dispersed, blown in every direction, part of the forest’s carpet.