Monday 19 November 2007

Watching the wildlife...

Wombling through the English countryside today, I found myself watching the wildlife, as a rural train driver often does.

The wildlife we see during the daytime tends to be rabbits, hares, foxes, more pheasants and partridges than a legion of shotgun-wielding hunters could ever catch, and occasionally the afore-mentioned shotgun-wielding, wax-jacket-and-flat-cap wearing hunters too.

But mostly what I watch are the birds. Out here in the sticks I'm privileged to see buzzards and kestrels on a daily basis, as well as the better known fluttery birdies and occasional unexpectedness such as the odd cormorant.

And it is kestrels who led me to the thought today's random witterings are about - or, at least, the little critters the kestrels hunt...


Driving through the Fens this morning I saw a kestrel hovering, presumably waiting for a chance to swoop down and grab some little critter which was quaking in the grass. And then the train turns up, the ground shakes, the little critter doubtless quakes even more - and the kestrel scarpers from the big noisy thing which is coming towards it very fast indeed... Then, when the ground stops shaking (once the train has passed), presumably the little critter shakes itself and wonders what the Heck just happened before running off somewhere it thinks airborne terrorists won't find it.

Coming back the same way later, I'm darned if I didn't disturb a kestrel hunting at almost the exact same spot (maybe 10 or 20 feet away, but no more than that). Possibly the same kestrel, and possibly the same small quivering critter in the undergrowth. Who knows?

But it got me thinking. And in my tiny little mind, the thought was this:

Do the little critters quivering in the undergrowth, hiding in terror from the kestrel-shaped shadow in the sky, feel the ground rumbling and think to themselves "It's coming, the thing that frightens off the monster in the sky!"? And, if they're intelligent enough to think in such a way, when they think of the train which causes the ground to shake and the kestrel to fly away in terror, do they think of it as some sort of miracle? Maybe even some sort of God?

Yeah, I know, I'm insane. It's a hazard of dealing with the "Great British Public" and Not-So-Great British management for all of your adult life!


(Incidentally, should anyone wish to use the idea as the basis for a story, feel free. It'd be nice if you could credit me somewhere, though. )

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