Rat redux

While most of my campus wildlife sightings are of the avian variety, I had a near spiritual awakening today after telling my English 098 class about the hawk eating the rat yesterday in the Foster oak tree. When one student looked greenish at the image, I said, "I, too am horrified by nature's violence, but it was a rat." My students were filling out their teacher evaluation forms while I sat outside on the concrete steps that lead down to Hanna 101 just after the dialogue. As I sat lost in non-thought, an adolescent rat poked his nose out of the bed of ivy and sniffed the blue day, making full eye contact with me. Startled at a noise, he (or she?) edged back into the ivy, only to resurface a few inches down, still offering a whiskery sniff. I was struck by the perfection of his/her ears and sable fur. RIP rat who became hawk bait. I pour a little of the tea from my omnipresent peanut butter jar into the earth for you.