My Unseen Friends

My unseen friends leave me messages, often in the little cemetery on my running route. 

The red-shouldered hawk I sometimes see left me a beautiful tail feather not long ago. I stuck it in a crevice in the trunk of a dying red cedar as a hello to anyone who might see it.

One day when I was lying on the grass under this tree, the red-shoulder landed on a dead branch very close by. She didn't know I was there. The branch broke under her weight and that hawk sprang straight up in the air flapping like mad. I laughed 'til my stomach hurt. It's fun to see such commandeering, graceful, powerful creatures look silly sometimes.

I would love to see the owl who left this whitewash on an old stone. I can only imagine the creatures who people the cemetery at night.

I saw the first tiny fawn prints, along with its mother's tracks, in early July. The pockmarks are raindrops. This photo doesn't look like much, until you see how tiny they are next to my hand.

Yes. That's a fawn the size of Chet Baker, maybe smaller. I imagined it tottering through the mud behind its mama.

One morning I found the most perfect pile of bobcat droppings in the middle of the road, past the cemetery. I was so excited that I ran straight home to get my camera. The droppings were full of turkey feathers--poult feathers, to be exact, and I wanted to document that. 

All the way home I dreamt of the photo I would take of the turkey-stuffed bobcat poo. I climbed in the car with my camera and by the time I got back someone had run over my poo pile. 

RATS!

I moped for a little while and then decided to get up before light the next morning in hopes the bobcat had come back and pooped there again.

I ran with my camera in my hand the whole way, more than two miles. And when I got there, the angels smiled and there was another perfect turkey-feather-stuffed bobcat ca ca, put right atop the old pile.

And I got my photo.

 So don't go around saying you don't know anyone who gets up early to photograph bobcat crap, because you do. One of the good things about living this far out is you don't really have to worry about anyone seeing you crouching next to a pile of poop, getting the perfect shot.

I wouldn't care if they saw me anyhow. It's probably more interesting than what they're up to, which would be smoking and driving a car. You can see the feather quill in the squashed poo, and then the fresh stuff, put right atop the smashed pile. How kind of the cat. Must've smelt my disappointment when the first pile was run over.

These photos conjure up an image of a beautiful bobcat leaping high into the air to snag a football-sized wild turkey poult. Good eatin'!

Just because I found it online, here is a photo of a melanistic bobcat taken in Scioto County, Ohio, several years ago by a trail camera. I've seen three Ohio bobcats, but none of them have been midnight black. What an unutterably cool animal. I might not recover if I saw something like this.

No, mostly what I get to see is what my unseen friends leave behind. That's where the imagination kicks in.