Food, Glorious Food!

Further tales from the duck pond . . .

I heard them before I saw them. Above my head: CAW! CAW! CAW!!!!

It was late afternoon. I had been walking by the duck pond on campus, when the commotion overhead caused me to look up.

And what I saw: on a branch above me, two large, black crows had cornered a squirrel with an apple core in its mouth.

The squirrel finally gave up its apple core and ran off; in an instant, one of the crows picked up the core and made off with it.

I turned to snap a few photos of the duck pond itself, and when I turned back around, I noted a tree close by, in which the same scenario was unfolding.

Tucked in the crook of the tree, a squirrel was enthusiastically chomping on something in its paws. A pizza crust, from the looks of it. Two crows were attempting to claim its prize.

One of the crows flew to a branch well above the squirrel. CAW! CAW! CAW!!!! "We've got a squirrel here who will NOT surrender its snack!"

But the squirrel, seemingly oblivious, kept chomping away on its meal. Mmm, delectable! (Doesn't everything taste just a bit better when somebody else is watching with envy?)

And it was only later, after I downloaded the photos and looked more closely, that I realized that what the squirrel had been happily eating was not in fact a pizza crust . . . but a piece of meat, complete with a bone.

The soundtrack: while it was awfully tempting to include a track about "meat pies" from Sweeney Todd, the song to accompany this photo is Food, Glorious Food, from the musical Oliver!

Also related: tales from the duck pond, parts 1 and 2.