Transcribed from a series of text messages:
❦ ❦ ❦
Kathleen packed tea and a banana in my briefcase this morning. I’m at work, eating the banana, drinking tea, waiting for a security scan of a website to finish, wondering how I will coordinate fixing what I find, when there is a thump at the window.
I have two windows, and I’m 190 feet above the street. Thumps are odd, so I turn around and —
There is a large, ruffled, and agitated turkey vulture struggling to perch on the ledge outside the window. It is a granite ledge, six inches wide. It isn’t designed for perching, except maybe the occasional pigeon or sparrow, and a turkey vulture doesn’t really fit.
I start to get up from my desk for a closer look and — the turkey vulture falls backward off the ledge. Not without a lot of fuss and feathers, but still a fall.
Then I notice a peregrine falcon, lazily spiraling through the neighborhood, make a very sharp turn and — dive.
Because of the angle, I can’t see what happened next, but it had to have been spectacular. While a peregrine is far too small to attack a turkey vulture in a fair fight, a turkey vulture is no match in aerial combat, especially when it is desperately and awkwardly preoccupied with avoiding a fall.
My banana, having suffered from too much excitement, broke in half and fell to the floor.
Yes, this excessively long message is to tell you my banana committed seppuku.
