#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Milkweed bursting in the meadow

Oh, today was delightful in the meadow, newly mowed, under a sunny sky, and even though I felt chilled to the bone in the twenty-something degree weather, I found ice on the river that made me smile, and a tree without leaves against a baby blue sky, and then milkweed busting out of its pod – but then, a darkening, a discovery, the ravaged feathers of a bird, a pheasant, perhaps, and some torn apart flesh, and I quickly moved past this disaster, and yet, out of the corner of my eye, a huge brown lump in the center of the meadow, a dastardly mystery, a torn apart carcass of a deer. Both deaths must have come after the tractor - I saw it mowing yesterday. Did the tractor destroy the pheasant? Could it have hit the deer in broad daylight? Or did a coyote ravage the deer last night? I cannot solve any of this; the dogs are interested, I tear them away, we move on through the meadow, the morning, a little bit stunned and disturbed at the mess this loss left.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017