preying on the weak

Last night came the news of another terror attack - this one at the airport in Istanbul.  The news made me feel sick to my stomach.  We are flying as a family tonight/tomorrow.  We are getting up at 3am, flying out at 6am to Istanbul then Toronto then Minneapolis.

They were in our path.

Then, you start to rationalize your odds and its amazing how far you can take this.  If I were in America I'd be glad it wasn't my country.  But I'm here.  And I'm glad it's not my city, or my street, or at the same time that I was going through there... the danger is getting closer - but even when it's close - I still remove myself from it, it's still hard to believe it's happening here and not just on TV.

My sick feeling stayed with me all day.  Partly from not sleeping enough.  Partly from the news.  Partly from the pigeons on our balcony.  I don't particularly like pigeons, but occasionally they land, build a next and lay some eggs before we notice.  No one in this house has the heart to get rid of the eggs - so our balcony becomes full of poop as the eggs hatch and the chicks grow under the parents wings.

But this is the third or fourth time pigeons have nested and hatched chicks on our balcony and the chicks have all come to the same fate.  A hawk or crow finds their nest and destroys them.  Yesterday the first was killed and the other was injured.  I looked out to check on them because I had noticed the mother was away earlier and the one was a bloody mess onto balcony.  The others' wing was askew and it was trying to get up and move back to its nest.  The parent pigeons were just watching form the railing - maybe ready for the predator to return.

I looked later and the dead chick had been skinned, and a little bit later only some entrails were left, and then nothing.  Meanwhile the injured chick had made it back to the nest and the mother was no top again.  But today it too was killed and slowly stripped down to nothing.

The scavengers preyed on the weak and unprotected.  The cruelty and darkness of this world is everywhere...