 Nest Site Update Christmas Day 3:00PM As much as would like to go to Central Park for my customary walk and feeding of the animals I have to stay completely away even beyond the 1000' order. Because with very few people in the Park as witnesses, an observer can easily misrepresent my exact whereabouts. I have no news so far on this day of nest activity but I'm sure old Pale Male is flying about very close by. It's has been ten days since I last saw him and Lola. It upsets me that the platform has to be up all through the weekend just so the work can be inspected on Monday. I find this unnecessary and careless but I have to keep positive thoughts. I have not made any comments to anyone riding in horse drawn carriages for ten days either. I watch the horses everyday in the bitter cold and rain and remain silent. I hope they don't think that I've forgotten about them. I stood on many days on Eight Avenue and watched them get drawn through the foul traffic, foaming at the mouth trying fruitlessly to hold their head in a comfortable position, even to close their lips, without having a thick rusty steel bit continuously yanked back on their teeth. Many times I want to slip my hand under their tight leather straps and caress their sore bodies. Maybe one day I'll get to see one get himself loose. Like one near Tavern on the Green and like all his heavy harnesses just fall to the ground like magic or something and he jumps for joy and runs across the West Drive and jumps over the Sheep Meadow fence and just gallop free. Even if it's only one that can get free to run on the soft turf and have him feel the wind rush across his face. And maybe he'll find a nice rough tree to rub his back against and cool that itch he had for so many years. I could see now maybe one person lying on the grass in this below zero weather trying to look relaxed and getting up suddenly to run for the fence. I figure it'll take a good ten minutes before the cops show up. It'll take a solid five minutes alone for the 911 operator to understand the frantic Irish driver ranting on the phone about some crazy man on a bicycle just stole his horse. She'll ask him to describe the horse and he'll get pissed. Then she may ask him if it's a real horse or is it a toy. So I figure a good ten minutes before the cops actually show up. They won't know how to handle the situation right away. But even ten minutes--one minute for that matter, so that one horse can feel what it's like to be free--to have been born into this universe by pure chance without any so-called 'original sin' and to fall in the hands of another animal that, for purposes of selfishness, greed and just a total lack of respect, denies these creatures of the one thing that should be naturally theirs. But maybe this newly acquired order not to speak is a way for me to feel what's it's like to have an itch on my back and not be able to scratch it. Maybe this is my harness, my blinkers, my heavy carriage and mostly my humiliation. So I guess I can console myself when I look at them lined up along Central Park South, that I'm not alone. |