Saturday, April 30, 2016

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw



A pair of nesting bald eagles on a web cam in the city of Pittsburgh were seen to be feasting on a dead cat they had brought to their nest.

In all likelihood, the cat was roadkill, but even so the lift itself should get applause as a physical feat.

Needless to say, applause is not what the eagles received. The title in The New York Post: "Eagle shreds cat on webcam, viewers can’t handle it",

This is not, of course, the first time a Bald Eagle has dined on cat.

From Lord Alfred Tenyson's poem, In Memoriam A.H.H. come this reminder that cats are fecund and all things are part of the chain:

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

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