Cartwheeling

While out walking the other day, I came upon two red-tailed hawks – broken and slumped in the leaf litter on the side of the road. They were dead, and lying about three feet apart. I was stunned into bewilderment and stood there for a moment, open mouthed. Had they been shot? Had they flown into a windshield? Had they both been perched on the same electric wire and been electrocuted?

            As I stood there gaping, a man and woman came up behind me and stopped short.

“Never a good sign when someone is gawking at the ground like that,” the man said.  I gestured with my finger and said something vague about the chances of there being not just one, but two casualties. Without hesitating, the man stepped around me and knelt down. He laid his hand on the breast of one of the two hawks. He dug his fingers into the plumage.

“Still warm,” he said. “A fledgling. Must have died just moments ago.” He grabbed the hawk by a talon and held it upside down.

“Oh, honey,” the woman protested, ‘do you have to pick it up?” He looked at her and shrugged, then carried the suspended hawk over to the second hawk and laid it directly next to it so that they were side by side. He then lifted the head of the second hawk and inspected its face. “Blood seeping from the beak of this one. And it’s still warm, too.”

“Well, should we call animal patrol?” his wife asked.

“Nope,” the man said. “Coyotes will take them tonight. They’ll just re-enter the cycle.” Then he turned and looked at me. “Ah well, it’s a shame,” he said. Taking his wife by the hand, they smiled and took their leave. A moment afterward, not knowing what else to do, I did the same.  

Well, to be accurate, I took my literal leave but the image of those two hawks came with me. And I’ve been haunted by the broken image of those two birds ever since, oddly impacted by their mutual and seemingly inexplicable death. How could such a thing happen? It seemed so senseless to me. Tragic, even.

A couple days later, still unsettled by their deaths, I did a little research. Apparently raptors will occasionally engage in a behavior called cartwheeling. Spurred by territorial or thievery disputes, two raptors will lock talons mid-flight and spin through the air in a cartwheeling spiral. They free-fall in a plummeting descent toward the ground in what looks like a dramatic dance - wings extended, heads tucked, spinning end over end as if completely out of of control. Typically, seeing the earth rushing up at them, they break their hold and separate with just enough time to avoid a collision. But sometimes, and hopefully rarely so, they don’t unlock in time and then hit the ground at full speed. Some bounce, uninjured. Others die on impact.  

Occasionally, cartwheeling is not aggressive in nature nor is it meant to settle a dispute. Once in a while, it can also be dance of courtship. Other times, it’s two fledglings at play - like kittens tumbling or puppies carousing. Only the playground is not a meadow nor a grassy backyard nor a comfortable bed with down pillows and duvets. It’s the damned sky coupled with solid, merciless ground - swelling up to swallow you whole like a whale, like a tidal wave. Imagine that crush of feeling! Imagine that rush of sound and wind! Adrenaline surging, hormones spiking, genitals swollen. Just picture that final, concussive impact. What a blow. What an incredible, devastating blow.

It gives me the shivers to imagine such an experience, covers me in prickles of tingling goose flesh. Oh, I don’t like it at all. But I’m fascinated with it. A bit heart-torn and dumbfounded by it. I suppose us humans experience something vaguely similar in our collisions – whether they be literal in nature (car crashes, plane crashes, suicide jumps) or metaphorical (a divorce, an eviction notice, news of the unexpected death of a loved one). But do we experience it in play, do we experience it in courtship or love making? Do we experience it in our moments of ecstasy and highest expression?

I suppose we do not. Not really. We don’t actually slam into a hard surface and die on impact. But crushes are called crushes for a reason, and the death of a friendship or a courtship can certainly feel like a literal death. A kink in the heart strings, a blow to the solar plexis, a blinking away of stunned, raw, bright, radiating hurt.

Yep, it’s a universal experience, even if it’s not a literally shared experience. If I can imagine cartwheeling – and surely I can because my thumping heart and skittish breath tells me it’s so – then I can experience it just the same as the red-tailed hawk.

Even in moments of play, and almost always in moments of staggering pain, sometimes the earth simply rushes up, and it swallows you whole.