Flashes of Panic

This has been one of those weeks when it’s tough to live in the northeast, when you’re cooped up inside or struggling with the snow-clogged streets and biting wind outside. It’s been pretty easy to feel sorry for ourselves.

Outside my office window this afternoon, however, a little drama played out that made me happy for my heated caves and internet connections.

There’s been a rabbit out there all week. Most of the time he was very still, in a bramble or at the base of a tree, looking like a rock, but occasionally I caught him popping up and nibbling on the dead branches. I haven’t been his only spectator (we’re into that here) and someone wondered why he was out at all. “Rabbits are out at night,” he said. One theory was that he was caught outside his burrow by an owl, and couldn’t find his way back; maybe he was wounded by the owl.

I was watching him today, noting that he was still hanging around. Then, earlier this afternoon, I saw more movement than usual from his area. I borrowed a pair of binoculars (do you know three different co-workers who keep binoculars in their offices?) and saw what was pretty clearly a red-tail hawk, feeding amid the drifting snow.

My department head said he’d seen the strike out of the corner of his eye while on a conference call. There were five or six of us watching for a while, with a sort of sick fascination.

Then, as we started to drift back to our offices, someone said to me, “I guess we’ve got our next server name.”

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