Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I was working on some writing in my office when Maria came in and said she had an announcement to make. She wanted to make sure I was paying attention. She sounded quite serious.

“There’s a package in the freezer,” she said cautiously,” and I don’t want you to be surprised. And whatever you do, don’t open it or try to eat it.” I rushed through the various possibilities, but nothing came to mind. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s the dead hawk,” she said.

In the freezer, I asked?,” stomach sinking, since I’ve never heard those words before in my lengthening life.

“Yup,” she said, “somebody from the state is coming by next week to take the hawk and examine it.”

Not in the freezer, I pleaded. Why not ouside in the barn? Not cold enough she said, we didn’t want it to ripen.

“No, no, not in the freezer,” I said, knowing this was pointless. I can only imagine how long it will take the state of New York’s conservation officers to get her to pick up our dead hawk and take it somewhere for examination. Our hawk could be in the freezer a good long time, and I’m 76, I might have nightmares of living with it for a long time.

Maria was right, I did need to pay attention.

I often open the freezer when Maria isn’t arund and unwrap the nearest frozen thing for lunch or dinner.

That would have been quite a shock to me.  My nerves are a bit wobbly these days.

She just laughed. I’ve never had dead or frozen wildlife in a refrigerator before, it wasn’t something done in New York City or New Jersey, certainly not in Providence, Rhode Island, where I grew up. She seemed surprise by reaction, I know here and can’t comprehend why I wasn’t thrilled to have this new element in our life and home.

It is not unusual in my life for my wife to return from a walk in the woods with stories about dead animals or animal parts she finds in her walks in the woods.  She likes to bring them home, study them, figure out what they are, and take a picture or two for her blog.

She pays attention in the woods, loves it out there, she misses nothing and brings many things hope, although this is the first one to go in the freezer. To see a dead owl and hawk in the same woods was a trauma.

Just last week, she brought home a beaver’s tooth and spotted the dead owl and hawk lying on the ground. This is very unusual. She loves to find skeletal parts of dead animals or pieces of rabbits and small animals found dead in the woods and bring them to me, much as Zinnia brings me her bones.

When she came back for a second look, the owl was gone. Most of the people I grew up with might have run screaming from the woods at the sight of this unprecedented carnage. She thinks I’m the strange one.

I usually try to pretend I’m thrilled, it beats the panic. Maria is making me a better and stronger man, like it or not. I never thought I’d have to shoot a sick lamb in my previous life either, this is a walk in the park.

I shold say we’ve never found a dead hawk on the ground in the woods or a dead owl so far from the road either. It’s a big deal. I’ll be curious to know what the state things if and when they ever show up. I asked Maria how long we might wait with a dead hawk in the freezer. She just shrugged, she found the question odd. Why shouldn’t stay for months?

Maria called the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and they asked if she could pick up the hawk (the owl is missing) and put it in the freezer, double wrapped, until a DEC officer would come by and take it to the state lab for examination. They couldn’t say when. Yup.

Maria said she’d be happy tkeep it until the DEC could come and get it. So for the next few days or weeks we’ll  be sharing our freezer with a dead hawk tightly wrapped up. I’ve always said I moved her to be closer to nature, but I’m not sure I want to be this close. I’m putting aside my queasiness and inhibition.

And I won’t go near the black package in the right corner of the refrigerator.

This is life here, and we surely are living close to nature, although not usually in our freezer. Our stove is doomed,  being replaced  next  Wednesday after being destroyed by a rat who like to pee in the stove instillation.

I believe this rat has paid for this with her life. I can only imagine what might happen in the freezer.

It’s okay, I thought, at least Maria didn’t find a dead rat out in the wooods – yet.

That didn’t make me feel any easier.