A Walk in the Dark

    My eyes, like binoculars, zeroed in on a zig-zagging speck I could see moving in and out of sight through the treetops. She wouldn't see or hear me until it was too late but she didn't need to know that silently I would carry her aloft and back.

   I've seen the ads before. I saw one recently. In it, there was a Photoshopped-picture of a Great Horned Owl in mid-flight, talons extended, going in for the kill of a rat also photoshopped onto the ad. There was no grass, no open field vistas, no trees. The photoshopped-drama was set against a tan color.  The paraphrased message of the poster was that the rat, an alleged pest, had eaten rat poisoning.  The owl's acute senses of hearing and sight help them locate tiny voles under dead leaves up to 900 feet away but they cannot tell the owl the rat they are about to eat is poisoned.  In turn, the poison will kill the Owl. The message is clear: If you must kill a rat or other varmint, don't use poison.  I walked home in the dark, I looked for owls and, then, I thought about that rat-poisoning poster I'd seen recently and, then, I thought about my own experience with poisoning.

      Before I walked home in the dark, I stopped @ my favorite Dive Bar after work. I hadn't been there in a long time. For months last year, when I had no hair and covered my bare head with funky hats, I didn't want to go there and see anyone I knew even remotely. While there, I drank 2 glasses of Prosecco which emboldened me to walk home in the dark. It's about a 4 block walk from the bar located on the southeast corner of a t-shaped intersection on a busy urban street to my apartment in a gentrified, urban neighborhood. Although I do not own a house in the neighborhood, I know many of the people who do from frequent walks through the neighborhood with my Chihuahua. I have often thought that, if I get into trouble walking home in the dark and someone scary bothers me, I could run up to one of the houses & pound on the door until the homeowner answers.  

      There was a time when I, regularly, walked through that neighborhood drunk and after dark; a potentially dangerous combination but, then, I thought about earlier last year and the poison I ingested to stay alive.  Slightly tipsy, I turned right and headed north down a quiet street lined with big, old houses. I stopped to look up into some of the January-barren trees in front of the houses. Maybe, I thought, I could see a Barred Owl perched on a branch close to the trunk of a tree. Then, I wondered if I could even see one if it was right above me because their feather colors are excellent camouflage. I didn't see a Barred Owl in the tree. Then, I wondered if I could see a Great Horned Owl in the same tree. Probably not. Great Horned Owls don't generally hang out in scrawny trees in urban venues. They're called "Great" for a reason. I thought about the rat-poisoning poster and, then, I thought about the Great Horned Owl that flew over me in a park last Spring. I thought about the 6 times last year an IV line was attached to the port under my left clavicle and infused poison into my body in order to kill a tumor @ the 2 o'clock position in my right breast.  I thought about how wonderful it was to be slightly drunk and walking home in the dark.

      I thought about meeting my 18-year-old self on that same corner I had just turned on back there even though - whoosh - when I was 18, I lived nowhere near the Midtown area of Kansas City, Missouri. I could be like that Great Horned Owl who, with strong, easy flaps of giant-sized rectangular wings, flew over me in the park and fly, instead, to myself in the past standing on that corner.  I felt myself flying out across time and distance and holding the hand of my youthful self as she went out and experienced life and, supposedly, matured. I thought about my naive self just a year ago. Simultaneously, I wanted to cry and reach out my hand to support her too. I wondered if the Owl would mind flying through 40 years of parallel universes to get to the older version of me who had no clue poison would save her. A drunk walk in the dark can cause a person to try and make sense of a lot of unrelated things. If an Owl eats a mouse that ate rodent poisoning, the anticoagulant in the poison will cause internal hemorrhaging and, eventually, kill the Owl. And yet, poison saved my life.