The photo of the day is inside my head - Friday 1/20/2006

I saw a beautiful thing die today. A falcon darted out of the darkness that flanks Sierra Highway and into the light from the stream of cars heading down below. I thought he was going to make it. Enjoyed a second’s thrill in his flight before he connected with the windshield of the truck in front of me.

The photo of the day is a triple exposure.

Imagine the bird, alive and flying straight against a backdrop as dark as this exposure. Imagine the bird vaulted twenty feet straight up into the air. Imagine the bird, wings blown back from its fall, landing on the asphalt off your right fender.

It happened too fast for any shutter to catch, but it’s all there in my mind.

I burst into tears. I thought about turning around, braving the onslaught of vehicles, calling for animal rescue. But I know the falcon was dead before it hit the ground. The sound of the impact had reached me over the voice coming from my CD player. There’s no way that fragile body survived a sixty-mile an hour blow.

The rest of my drive felt like a funeral procession.

Usually, I’m good at rationalizing road kill. It’s part of the natural progression that things will die and that other things will live as a result of that death. The falcon was probably drawn across the highway by the shining eyes of a rabbit. I’m not a vegetarian any more, so how outraged am I allowed to be?

But something deep within me cries that falcons are supposed to be long lived. They’re supposed to glide and soar and cull the weak of other species.

And I’m not supposed to have to see one die. I’m not supposed to have to see my own beautiful fleeting life in the final flash of its cinnamon and rust wings.