A few weeks ago I was looking out of our window and noticed something movement out of the corner of my eye.  I looked up, scanning the woods for evidence.  Not seeing anything, I went back to filling milk and dumping crumbs and making coffee and filling the milk again.  I saw more motion and looked up - this time, spotting something now resting on the jungle gym.  "It's a hawk!" I yelled, forcing everyone to go look out the window and watch the bird with me.  More motion, now a pair of birds sitting in the spot where my children play.  "TWO hawks!"  Foot high birds.  "Go get your dad and tell him we have hawks in the yard!" I yelled. 

"Dad, there's HAWKS EVERYWHERE!"  Martin yelled, running down the hall. 

"Hawk! HAWK! Hawkmonster!" Sophie yelled, right in my ear.

By the time Marty appeared, all the birds were gone.  "They were right there, and they were BIG." I told him.  "What should we do?"

"What do you want me to do?" he said.

"Call somebody, find out what we need to do." I told him.  "And could you check to make sure there aren't big piles of hawk poop on the jungle gym?"

*** days later***

Swoop, swoop.  Swoop, swoop.  FOUR hawks perched ominously on the jungle gym, one of them sometimes moving over to the clothesline.  One hawk is interesting.  Two hawks are kind of creepy.  Four hawks seems dangerous and a bit ominous.  I went down the checklist of people I might call for help:
Marty - at work
Dad - not home
Ryan - not home
911 - seemed a bit extreme
Animal control - is that a real place?

My sister-in-law Carrie told me that I should contact Ryan's friend John who works for The Nature Conservancy to find out if we could still go into the yard or if we'd have to move.  So, I sent John a message:
"We have four birds hanging out around our yard that I think might be hawks - they're about a foot tall, dark gray/brown and have a white tail.  So far, we've just been watching them.  Then, I started wonder if they were dangerous in any way.  Like... would they swoop down at the kids.  Tell me what to do."

John responded:

"From your description it sounds like a coopers hawk, they eat small birds, rodents and frogs.  Coopers hawks are very common in the area and are seen often in town as well as in the country.  This bird is not dangerous by any means and I would not worry about the kids."

Having received John's message, the kids and I went out to the jungle gym to give it an inspection.  I wasn't sure what we'd find when we got there, but I've seen the massive mess left behind by blue herons and I imagined that hawks could do some similar damage.  Still a bit uneasy, we grabbed my camera and ran out to the jungle gym, our eyes scanning the sky.  We climbed up the jungle gym steps and found the following:


Kind of a mess, but not too bad.  Certainly not as bad as if four herons had been perching on the platform.  If that had happened we'd have to just burn it down and start over.  As I was taking this picture, I felt my eyes following the dots, the poop splotches forming a pattern in my mind like a message.  I tilted my head to the left a bit and I could see it clearly as my mind connected it together.


The hawkmonsters love us, it's obvious.  But I think they must have felt bad because they haven't been back.  Maybe they felt like their love was unrequited because all we did was stare at them through the window, all lined up in the house like a bunch of hawks on a jungle gym.