So yesterday, after brunch downtown, I wandered over to Washington Sq. park and sat and did some reading/editing. While there I looked up at a tree. So far so good, right?

On one of the upper branches I noticed a pigeon on its side. Odder yet was the fact that the bird was balanced in such a way it was impossible for it to have laid there, like that, without falling. So I looked again. That’s when I noticed the very tree colored hawk standing on the pigeon.

The hawk, however, had a small problem. Its foot was stuck in the chest of the pigeon. I mean stuck. It would stand still and look around and then suddenly shake its foot wildly, trying to dislodge the pigeon. It didn’t work. A crowd gathered around the base of the tree. The hawk noticed but kept acting like everything was perfectly normal. That? That isn’t a pigeon. It’s a … a … slipper! That’s it.

After a while the hawk got annoyed with all the attention and flew off to another tree – with a pigeon still stuck to its foot. So this poor pigeon, who had been struggling and still alive, suddenly found itself being carried off by the lungs to a new tree. Tat did it in but quick.

The hawk landed on a new perch and kept shaking its foot. Which is when the squirrel got involved. See this squirrel saw a hawk with what seemed, but couldn’t possibly really be, a pigeon slipper (they were all the rage in Paris, where the squirrel was from) and needed to investigate. Squirrel took half a step up the tree. Hawk fluttered wings with menace. Squirrel took half a step back down the tree. Repeat on a loop for a good five or ten minutes.

Meanwhile, the crowd had moved to the new tree and grown. There were now about 40 people around the tree. The hawk got pissed again and carried its slipper to a large flat lamp post. It sat and shook its foot and then proceeded to slowly and carefully rip the pigeon to bits. Halfway through it started to eat a chunk here and there.

Finally its foot was free. About an hour and a half after it had gotten stuck. The hawk flew off and left half a pigeon carcass on top of a lamp post.

Who needs the Discovery Channel?