YUMMY YUMMY!

Blog number 101                                               July 22, 2007

A few years back I was walking down J. Street in Sacramento and I happened to look up into the top of one of the elms that lined the street.  There, on an uppermost branch, I saw a red tailed hawk with his beak stretched skyward, a bony hair covered squirrel tail disappearing down his outstretched throat.

What did that piece of hair and bones taste like?  Why would ANYTHING eat something like that?  Did it taste good to him?  I couldn't believe that.  I got to wondering if some animals ate due to something besides taste.

Yesterday I was thinking something about humans being a pattern of patterns in relation to my reading habits and my walking habits.  I can't remember the exact trail that my mind took, and I didn't have my recorder with me, so that part is probably lost to posterity.  Anyway, this led me to thinking about that hawk and his squirrel lunch - or was it brunch?  It was about ten thirty in the AM.  Brunch.  Yes? 

I then thought about snakes eating eggs, which I have thought about periodically ever since I first heard they did that, and once again, I wondered why it tasted good to them.  I mean, all they could taste would be calcium minerals.  Right?  But then, in this train of thought about patterns of patterns, I thought, "maybe it is the heat of the food that they like.  Snakes don't eat food they find - only fresh killed. 

Maybe it is the warmth of the eggs from the mother bird sitting on them that peaks his epicurean taste and allows him to also swallow a dead rat, tasting nothing but hair and crap all the way to the gizzard."

I wish I had thought of this back when I was taking Experimental Psychology.

Do hawks eat found food?