Driving south round midnight in a howling hurricane.
Driving past the local park when a Carrion Crow started a sustained attack on a Woodpigeon. The Woodpigeon must've been hit by a car cos it looked pretty fucked up. The Crow was pecking the poor bastard to death with its big, fuck off bill. What a way to go, eaten alive by a big black bird. Come to think of it, an insane amount of insects/birds/reptiles/mammals/etc die by being eaten alive. The food chain. Good job we're at the top of it. Imagine it. Lions disembowel their victims whilst they're still alive. They suffocate you around the neck with their jaws whilst ripping your insides out with their razor claws. It saves time. Less time to lose the kill to a pack of Hyenas you see. Imagine it. Go on, imagine having that one to you by a 8ft Lion. Shit!
In the natural world it happens all the time, this being eaten alive lark. It's the norm. Commonplace. Mr Blue Tit comes home from work and says to the missus "Hi love, have you had a good day? Oh, and our Ian got eaten alive today by a Sparrowhawk"
"Oh" she replied nonchalantly "We'll be having another brood next year. Pass me the sugar".
It's normal to be eaten alive in the natural world. A very sobering thought to us humans.
The Crow stepped up its attack and started ripping tasty morsels of pure living flesh from the neck and breast of the Pigeon. The Pigeon was flapping in a way that suggested that it wasn't quite happy with this situation. A couple of minutes and the flapping stopped, and the poor dead baby bald pigeon was no more.
Two days later, I passed through the same area and saw perhaps the same Crow chasing a fit and well Collard Dove. To no avail. Perhaps it had got the taste.
Corvid attack. Not much fun for the Pigeon.
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