A post in which I reveal possibly a little too much about our family’s strangeness…
I’ve written previously about Baby Kitten, Simon’s regular bed-time alter-ego who also shows up sporadically throughout the day. You’d think that would be weird enough, right? I’ve also described Burt Handsome, alternately Sunderland’s star goalie and striker and Simon’s soccer-playing alter-ego.
Well, there’s a new assumed identity in town: Allow me to introduce you to Baby Hawk. This one is strange, and I totally take the blame for it.
Last year, a red-hailed hawk couple named Bobby and Violet made a nest on a ledge of a window on the 12th floor of NYU’s Bobst Library. That window happened to belong to president of NYU, and he agreed to position a webcam so interested parties could watch Bobby and Violet raise their young. What unfolded was an avian soap-opera: Violet had an injured leg, and her one egg appeared to not be fertile when it hadn’t hatched over a week past its due date.
The drama continued when Pip finally hatched, grew up, and fledged against a backdrop of Violet’s deteriorating condition. Pip fledged last June or July, and Violet died in the late fall after vets attempted to surgically repair her injured leg. These events were witnessed and followed by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe—including Vatican City—via The New York Times’s City Room Blog.This year Bobby is back with his new mate, Rosie. They build their nest on the same ledge, and their two baby hawks, or eyas, were born 10 and 8 days ago respectively.
Simon has been interested in babies of all sorts lately, so last week I pulled up the Hawk Cam and introduced him to Bobby, Rosie, and the baby “puff-balls”. He watched Rosie sit on the babies to keep them warm and protected and also saw her feed the eyas strips of dead rat, which launched a discussion of hawk predation.
Thus Baby Hawk was born. I’m supposed to sit on Baby Hawk, and Baby Hawk has as screech like you wouldn’t believe. Baby Hawk also opens his tiny mouth to accept bits of rat, mouse, squirrel, and pigeon. Last night, the weirdness reached its zenith when upon tucking him into bed, Baby Hawk made the following request:
“Is rabbit perhaps on the menu tonight?”
Swear to God. He really said “perhaps” and “on the menu” while asking for a dead cute animal. He’s going method on me. Thankfully, none of Simon’s peers are able to read this post to use knowledge of his weirdness against him, and most of my friends already know how weird I am!