Tuesday 4 October 2016

Owls, not Heroin, for the Win

The birds of Kilton Raptor Rescue have come back to town this weekend, the day after I walked through town thinking "I wonder where the Kilton Owls are", with a newcomer bird; a gyr/saker falcon cross, a bird with a desert sandiness tinting the gyr's normally very pale plumage.

It's the benefit of always being around in town drinking cups of tea and coffee, the chance to see things and not miss anything. I hate missing anything.

One thing I wish I'd missed at the time, although in retrospect I'm now glad I saw it, was while I was having a coffee in the library cafe while reading some sci-fi comic nonsense. Outside, all manner of dishevelled folk and a staffordshire bull terrier seemed to be wandering around, greeting each other seemingly aimlessly before huddling round the trees at one end of the park.

"Oh the usual street drinkers" I thought. Then a girl did a very sort of artificial hug with one bloke, and I thought "Well, that's a drug deal. I've seen that before outside here."

The next thing, a girl with pink trousers wandered off to the fence, trousers halfway down her leg, backside showing. Another guy was standing nearer the library, also with his trousers in mourning.

My internal story changed again. "Dirty sods, so out of it they can't use a toilet."

Finishing my coffee I left and headed across the park, heading as usual for the lavender where the hardy carder bumblebees, the last about, were feeding. And then looking back across, I could see the syringe sticking out of the man's groin as another man got his works ready down on the grass.

My disgust just dismembered any sympathy or empathy I might have had for them. I wished I had my cricket bat. I just thought they were the dirtiest, filthiest, most worthless people there were, despoiling a park when there were plenty of other non-public places where they could do this.

I wonder today, if my feelings have changed, if I've come to any greater awareness of what they might be going through to be reduced to that state of utter inhumanity.

And I feel really guilty that I haven't. And I ought to have a better idea.

Meanwhile, here are owls, pretty, handsome owls, cute owls, that don't get addicted to heroin.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 04.10.16










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