The Frozen Hawk

 

         The hawk was huge.  Its wingspan was easily three feet in length.  Its powerful beak was massive.  It was also dead and frozen to the layer of ice on top of the Pine Springs storage tank.

         As I looked over this interesting case, I wondered about the cause of death.  Was it murder or suicide?  I had heard of whales beaching themselves to die and lemmings walking off cliffs, but it was not common practice for a hawk to lay down, spread-eagle (or spread-hawk, in this case) on a layer of ice and drift into endless sleep.  It was perplexing to say the least.

         I pried the frozen bird out of the ice leaving a fossilized print of the bird behind.  I found no gunshot wound, no blood.  Murder was out.  No blunt force trauma.  Bludgeoning with a pipe wrench was out.  This was a bird, so poisoning by a jealous lover was probably out of the question.

         So it was back to the scene of the crime for a more thorough investigation. There were no witnesses.  If there had been, I doubt I would understand them anyway.  I looked at the top of the tank from a different angle and began deducing the scenario.  It was through knowledge gleaned from a boy scout manual, and a collection of Hardy Boys books, that helped to deduce the solution.

         A light dusting of snow had fallen and in it was the fingerprint, or should I say feather print, that pieced it all together.  An area of snow was brushed away with the splayed out print of wings with feathers.  In between these prints were claw marks scratched into the ice.  From this print, the snow was brushed by a large object ending at the object itself; the victim in question.

         As I was puzzling out this deduction, I happened to look down at the easily discernable talon prints.  The ice was crystal clear and my only eyewitness, unable to speak, deaf and dumb to my surroundings, was lazily hovering between the layer of ice and the weeds below.  A very large, orange goldfish!  The case was solved.  It was an accidental death due to greed and mistaken appearances.

         That hawk saw the fish through the crystal clear ice and thought, “What an easy meal!”  Its next thought: “Ouch!”, as it impacted the ice from a steep high speed dive, slid across the ice, and brained himself on the side of the metal tank.

         Goldfish – 1

         Hawk - 0