HAWK HASSLES - AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT KARATE

How's this for truth being stranger than fiction? The place - the suburbs of West Hartford, Connecticut. The time - the morning. My mother told me there was a big bird in the backyard and it may be a wild turkey. I checked it out and it wasn't a wild turkey but an honest-to-God hawk. We had noticed an increase in the chipmunk and rabbit (the prime suspects when the vegetables in the vegetable garden disappeared) population and had seen red tailed hawks flying in the distance. Of course there was the problem of removing the hawk. This bird was large and looked like it could eat me for dinner. Fortunately, it did not stay long and flew off for parts unknown. This is not the first time the fauna have paid us a visit - a few years back a wild turkey (now that is a big bird) paid our next door neighbors a visit. If I had a machete we could have had an early Thanksgiving!!!