The other day, as I sat through yet another Zoom meeting, I heard an unusual series of squawks outside. I thought that maybe I was hearing an angry animal, or, God forbid, an angry neighbor just outside my home.
As I stuck my head out the patio door, I looked up to see a crow persecuting a hawk, trying to make the hawk’s life miserable. The crow would fly straight toward the ascending hawk, miss it entirely on purpose, fly out circularly, only to rampage back in the direction of the hawk, screeching loudly and flying tight circles around it as if to maximize its level of irritability and arrogance. The crow was acting as if it were the ultimate gadfly, trying to provoke the hawk to do something stupid.