Dear Blog,
I’m sorry to have neglected you lo this past (almost) year.
To make it up to you, here is a picture of a Great Blue
Heron eating a gopher she has hunted down and killed in a cemetery.
I have seen Great Blue Herons hunting in wetlands many times,
spearing with their dagger-like beaks unsuspecting fishes or frogs as they swim
by. But a heron hunting gophers on dry land in a historic Mendocino cemetery? Well,
this was a first for me.
When today started, I had a simple goal. I was going to
photograph the first compelling thing I saw on my way to work, and I was going
to post it on my blog with a commentary. But my walk this morning was
relatively peaceful and uneventful, and as I passed one of the oldest
cemeteries in town on the way to my job, I was losing all hope of anything materializing
that was noteworthy enough to re-start this whole blogging business.
But then, less than fifty feet from my office, there she was,
a creature completely out of her element. A thing unexpected. A thing figuring
out how to survive in a strange environment. A thing adapting, learning,
growing... A thing killing rodents instead of frogs and fishes - rodents that
have sharp teeth. And stabby claws.
She was a thing killing things and eating things in a place filled
with killed things who themselves were being eaten by the things being killed
and eaten by her.
And so has been my life.
Love,
Jen
