It's about a quarter to nine in the morning and I'm sat at a bench in McAllister Park, one of those beneath a canopy designated the Al Becken Pavilion by an adjacent sign. I'm drinking iced tea from a flask. I've cycled ten miles from home, and this is my tea break before I cycle ten miles back, as I do Monday to Friday before the sun gets too hot. I'm enjoying the novelty of being able to sit here.
Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Al Becken Pavilion has become home to the Workout Bears, having been driven away from their natural habitat - presumably some gymnasium or other. The Workout Bears are a couple of big, chunky, hairy young guys who have taken to working out in the park. They occupy the Al Becken pavilion with their plein air weight lifting and squat thrusts. Kettle bells and paraphernalia take up space on every available picnic table, and there's usually some shitty portable iPod blasting out the worst autotuned crap you've ever heard as a soundtrack to their grunting as they bellow encouraging clichés at one another, you got this, bro, or you can do this, buddy, or whatever. It's difficult to relax in my usual spot with the Workout Bears grunting away behind me doing something fucking stupid with lengths of rubber hose attached to one of the picnic tables; and I've been here at eight in the morning, and at eleven, and they're always here. I really hate the selfish fuckers.
However, they've been absent for the last couple of days, so hopefully their favourite gymnasium is open for business once more, or they've died or something. I have my tea break back. I can see a few parked cars, some deer, occasionally someone walking a dog or maybe a runner, but otherwise it's entirely peaceful, as it should be.
Now I see a woman with a hawk of some description, a large bird of prey sat upon her arm as she walks along, heading into the woods. Holy shit, I say to myself.
Five minutes pass before I finish my tea and get ready to leave. I decide I'll take the road back through the woodland today, because maybe I'll see the woman with the hawk.
Amazingly I do see her, just off the side of the road. A car drives slowly past and I can hear her telling the driver that she is a falconer. I cycle up as the car passes, then stop to watch, feeling a little awkward. The bird is huge and amazing and presently sat in a nearby tree.
'I hope it doesn't seem like I'm being nosy,' I say, 'but would you mind if I took a photograph?'
'I bought her down here to catch squirrels,' the woman says without looking over, then after a minute adds, 'you can take a photo, I suppose.'
Something bothers me about this exchange so I don't say anything else, just watch the bird flying back to the woman's arm, then up into another tree. I take my photograph, then cycle away.
As I cycle, I realise that the squirrels of McAllister Park probably have a tough time as it is given the size of some of the owls I've seen here, and could probably use a break. Who takes their hawk - or whatever it was - to a public park so it can hunt down a few squirrels? Would it not make more sense to go somewhere less public such as Salado Creek, which is easy enough to get to being within the city limit, and bigger and more wild than the park? I suppose it depends upon whether or not one needs an audience, which was what the woman seemed to very much project with her affected nonchalance.
Oh - it's always such a nuisance that people bother me when I bring my giant bird down here to hunt squirrels.
Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Al Becken Pavilion has become home to the Workout Bears, having been driven away from their natural habitat - presumably some gymnasium or other. The Workout Bears are a couple of big, chunky, hairy young guys who have taken to working out in the park. They occupy the Al Becken pavilion with their plein air weight lifting and squat thrusts. Kettle bells and paraphernalia take up space on every available picnic table, and there's usually some shitty portable iPod blasting out the worst autotuned crap you've ever heard as a soundtrack to their grunting as they bellow encouraging clichés at one another, you got this, bro, or you can do this, buddy, or whatever. It's difficult to relax in my usual spot with the Workout Bears grunting away behind me doing something fucking stupid with lengths of rubber hose attached to one of the picnic tables; and I've been here at eight in the morning, and at eleven, and they're always here. I really hate the selfish fuckers.
However, they've been absent for the last couple of days, so hopefully their favourite gymnasium is open for business once more, or they've died or something. I have my tea break back. I can see a few parked cars, some deer, occasionally someone walking a dog or maybe a runner, but otherwise it's entirely peaceful, as it should be.
Now I see a woman with a hawk of some description, a large bird of prey sat upon her arm as she walks along, heading into the woods. Holy shit, I say to myself.
Five minutes pass before I finish my tea and get ready to leave. I decide I'll take the road back through the woodland today, because maybe I'll see the woman with the hawk.
Amazingly I do see her, just off the side of the road. A car drives slowly past and I can hear her telling the driver that she is a falconer. I cycle up as the car passes, then stop to watch, feeling a little awkward. The bird is huge and amazing and presently sat in a nearby tree.
'I hope it doesn't seem like I'm being nosy,' I say, 'but would you mind if I took a photograph?'
'I bought her down here to catch squirrels,' the woman says without looking over, then after a minute adds, 'you can take a photo, I suppose.'
Something bothers me about this exchange so I don't say anything else, just watch the bird flying back to the woman's arm, then up into another tree. I take my photograph, then cycle away.
As I cycle, I realise that the squirrels of McAllister Park probably have a tough time as it is given the size of some of the owls I've seen here, and could probably use a break. Who takes their hawk - or whatever it was - to a public park so it can hunt down a few squirrels? Would it not make more sense to go somewhere less public such as Salado Creek, which is easy enough to get to being within the city limit, and bigger and more wild than the park? I suppose it depends upon whether or not one needs an audience, which was what the woman seemed to very much project with her affected nonchalance.
Oh - it's always such a nuisance that people bother me when I bring my giant bird down here to hunt squirrels.
I am suddenly reminded of Vermin, a woman who used to post under that name on a bulletin board for which I served as admin. Snakes were her thing, and the username was some sort of taking back the pejorative deal. She would start threads on this or that type of snake, then pick fights with anyone who responded because they didn't understand snakes. If you weren't keen on snakes, you were an arsehole. If you liked snakes, you were the sort of person who thought such and such about snakes but had it all wrong and were therefore the worst sort of arsehole because your misinformed bullshit was actually causing the death of snakes right at this very moment. This is who the falconer reminded me of.
I cycle the rest of the way home, happy that the practice of social distancing has made no difference to my daily existence.
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