"Nature red in tooth and claw..." - we've all pretty much heard this phrase, but sometimes we need to be reminded what it means.

One day last week, when I went out front to check the mail, I noticed a rather odd and unpleasant mess on the driveway, consisting of a flat roundish fleshy object about 1 1/2" across containing what appeared to be a number of peanuts, to which was attached a long string-like fiber stretched out straight for about two feet, all being of a blue-black color. Neither knowing what it could be, nor wanting to touch the thing, I left it for the fire ants (who had a large nest quite close by) to deal with it for me. In any case, there was a heavy rain that night and the next morning all that was left was the "string."

Yesterday (Sunday, 25th), I went out to get the the morning paper, only to be confronted on the front walkway by the gnarled remnants of a squirrel, the back end, of which the tail was pretty much the only intact part left. It had been dead for some time, according to my nose; I can only assume it had been killed by a hawk (we have a good many, mainly red-tailed), partly eaten and the leftovers stuck in the tree branches overhead until dislodged by a later bout of high winds. The object mentioned in the previous paragraph, I now realized, was part of the squirrel's stomach and intestines, containing his last meal.

Alas, Squirrel Nutkin! I knew him well, gracefully running across the street before my car as I hurriedly put on the brakes, building his cleverly-designed nests in my tree only to have a strong wind send them tumbling to the ground, and planting acorns and pecans in the flower beds and in the middle of the yard, only to forget (or die), leaving them to grow up into oaks and pecan trees, and what's that scurrying sound from the attic?

Well, well, I guess hawks gotta eat too.

I ended up getting a shovel out and removing the remains from the walkway and - instead of tossing it into the garbage can, as was my first thought - I tossed it into the flowerbed around the big tree, with its oaks and pecans growing up around the big Arizona ash in the middle. May Nutkin make his contribution to the health of the big tree he so loved to scamper about in.

Afternote: I did consider saving the tail as a memorial, but the scent of decay was already too strong and I have no particular notion of what needs to be done to preserve such a thing. The "string" was too baked into the pavement for me to get it up with the shovel, so there it remains.