Jalapeno

One of the greatest benefits to not owning a car and not driving at all, is that I walk a lot. I wish I could say that this was an earth-conscious, go green kind of decision or that I have made a commitment to taking a thousand steps a day toward better health, but really neither of these things are true. I walk out of pure necessity. Riding a bike makes me sweaty, and, let's be real, Rollerblades are for tools. Or dads. I won't even get into how Segways are stupid so I am left with my own two feet.

If I did bike, or roll, or drive to work every day, I would have completely missed out on the opportunity to engage in one of the most mystifying relationships I have ever been in. With a hawk.

There is a little bridge on Washington Avenue that I walk across twice a day, every day. I believe all the strangeness I have witnessed on this bridge is in large part due to the fact that this bridge is situated above train tracks and across from a strip club. One day I found a huge ball of synthetic hair in the sewer grate there, and a piece of shit too large and too familiar to have come from a dog. I also once peered over the edge of the bridge just in time to see a homeless man puking. All these things happened before 9:00 AM.

Several weeks ago I was bopping down Washington, listening to my ipod as I often do, when I saw the outline of what I could, with certainty, identify as a bird of prey. My dad is a dork and a bit of an amateur ornithologist, so as I neared this thing I got very excited. It was a hawk. Right there in the middle of the warehouse district. And it wasn't moving. Even as I moved very close this hawk just continued to look me right in the eye and remain perfectly still. It was winter and there was no one else around, so I felt like maybe I was about to die. Die in some very literary, magical realist fashion. It turned out not even to be a bad omen to the day I was about to have so I put it out of mind.

That night as I walked from my office back to my bus stop, I crossed the bridge and saw a half-empty bladder of that liquid nacho cheese they put in dispensers at concession stands. It's a weird thing to see on the street anyway but weirder still was that the next morning, it was gone.
The synthetic hair - still there, but the half-empty bladder of nacho cheese - M.I.A. I had two thoughts at this point:
1. This could explain why that one dude was throwing up.
2. If it was the hawk (which is what I wanted to believe), why would he take the bladder and not the huge ball of synthetic hair which would make a very comfortable nest?

That evening I crossed the bridge excitedly, and looking for signs, feeling like I could DEFINITELY talk to animals. I got nothing. As I continued down Washington I happened to look up. There in the sky, very near Sex World, I saw the hawk WITH THE NACHO CHEESE BLADDER CLASPED SECURELY IN HIS TALONS. It appeared that no one else noticed this, and that he was putting a show on solely for me, which I appreciated.

I thought of the people in their cars on their evening commute potentially having, what they would assume to be bird shit, plopping on their windshields and arriving home to smell that it was actually drops of liquid nacho cheese. How did it get there?

The answer: Jalapeno.