Babies Got To Eat

Life goes on.  Even in these trying times. Virus? Stay home? Toilet paper?  This morning I went for an early morning run and it was foggy.  As I made my way through the forest preserve I noticed something up ahead of me.  As I came closer I made out what looked like a truck.  It was weird to see a truck so early in the morning but since the forest preserve district was working in the area I wasn’t too surprised.  In an effort to bring the preserve back to it’s natural state, they are eliminating as much of the invasive species of flora as possible.  It was then that I noticed something off to my left, in the fog, about 20 yards away.  It looked like a dog.  Alone.  I stopped and stood still.  It was a coyote.  Looking at me.  We stood motionless in the stillness of the early morning.  I could see her and she could see me.  In the past when I came upon wildlife like this whether its a deer or a skunk or a coyote, the outcome was always the same.  They leave.  Not this time.  She dropped her head, still looking at me, and started walking towards me.  I didn’t feel in danger but I knew that the best thing for me to do was to start walking away.  As I turned my head I heard a noise.  I quickly turned back to catch the coyote pouncing on a rabbit!  She violently shook the rabbit to make sure it was dead, looked at me to make sure I wasn’t advancing on her, then she turned away and started off on her way.  I’m sure (I suppose) that she was on her way back to the den with breakfast for her pups.  I felt like I was part of what just happened.  I was so close that I wondered if my presence made the rabbit stay still enough for the coyote to strike.  Whatever my part was, it came to me that life was happening around me and I was still part of it!

It also came to me that some great thing have happened in time like this.  William Shakespeare and Issac Newton both came up with their best work when they were quarantined from a world wide virus outbreak.  Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein while she was stuck inside for an extended time during the Little Ice Age that was happening in Europe in the summer of 1816.

We are all in some stage of quarantine, lock down , or what ever, But that doesn’t mean life is going to come to a stop.

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans –John Lennon