A Fox Hunt:

https://soundcloud.com/james-shirley-barnes/a-fox-hunt

During fall and harvests ripening all over the northern hemisphere,
a squirrel gathers nuts and berries on a forrest floor.

The squirrel is a half mile off from a fox,
who stops dead in its tracks at a wisp of wind
across its nose of a squirrel's scent on the forrest floor.

Winds whip overhead tree branches
and the fox stalks through undergrowth
upwind towards its scent of a squirrel on the forrest floor.

Suddenly, the fox crackles a twig within earshot of the squirrel
and for an instant: the forrest is still, save wind in pines.

The fox stops in its tracks amidst shrubs
while overhead branches whisper winds
and squirrels in treetops click their cheeks
warning the lone squirrel on the forrest floor
who is now alert to the fox.

Birds flutter from nestled branches overhead
as the fox bounds towards the squirrel on the forrest floor
and pounces, catching the squirrel by the tip of its tail.

The squirrel lets out a caterwaul of clicks
with its cheek while twisting out of grips
with the fox paw on its tail and swiping
at the fox's nose with its sharp claws.

Then, the squirrel bolts up a nearby tree
leaving its precious nuts on the ground
for the fox to forage, which the fox eats
after failing to fell the squirrel collecting
nuts on the forrest floor.

The squirrel that the fox almost catches
by the tail on the forrest floor
watches from overhead branches chagrined
and throwing empty nut shells
at the fox from its knot in a tree.

Squirrels from other trees
cross branch to branch
to gather on branches nearby
where the squirrel who had been on the forrest floor
has its knot in a tree.

Squirrels caterwaul with cheeky click sounds
throwing empty shells and berry refuse at the fox.

The fox scampers off through the forrest
in search of other territorial prey to feed
his family of foxes in a fox den about a mile off
from where the fox stalks the squirrel on the forrest floor.

The fox wanders the forrest floor and
through clearings along side fences in search of prey
sensing winter is soon to be upon it
and its den of little foxes
and a fox mate.

There is just so much time to scamper
before the fox has to eat.

Catching the odd mice in its late afternoon hunt
when the temperature drops,
the fox comes upon a barn and a chicken coop
to which the fox arrives through a notch in a fence
along side a clearing on the forrest's edges.

Chickens cluck loudly sensing the fox
and a dog barks from within a farm house.
A light switches on by a door as the fox is pawing
at the mesh wire fence around the coop.

Suddenly, a farmer bursts out of a door to the farm house
beside a window with a light in it during the dusk hour of day
and steps onto a dimly lit porch firing buckshot
into air pointing away from barn and house into clearings,
which stretch to forrest edges.

The farmer sees the fox's silhouette disappear
through a notch in a fence and bound towards
forrest edges while the farmer reloads buckshot
and fires again into the air towards the forrest edges.

The fox escapes the farmer's ire into the forrest
and meanders the mile through the forrest undergrowth
to his den with three fox pups and a fox mate waiting.

On the way through the forrest meandering
amidst undergrowth towards his den,
the fox happens upon a wounded bird
whose wing has left it stranded on the forrest floor
hopping from shrub to shrub so as to keep out of reach
and sight of what the bird senses as a fox stalking it.

The fox and the bird flurry
in a battle of hunter over prey
when the fox bites the bird at the neck
and the bird's red blood spills into the fox's mouth
and onto the forrest floor.

With its hunted prey of a bird in its mouth,
the fox carries the pheasant bird through the forrest
to its den of fox pups and a fox mate who greet the fox
with the felled pheasant in its mouth with yelps, yips and licks
to the fox's snout.

The fox drags the pheasant into the den on the forrest floor
for a foxes' feast of pheasant during fall around Thanksgiving
when the farmer and most families eat a bird as a feast.

Animal Cruelty is No Joking Matter:

Declared by the Almighty "stewards of the earth," humans have failed.

We are more interested in cheap Chinese toys with lead paint on them than Albatross eating out of a sea of plastic floating in Puller's toilet rendering Albatross chicks gutted by everything from plastic bags to plastic syringes.

What I do not understand is why the Albatross don't recognise sardines from plastic, or are the sardines eating plastic shards too thinking it undersea lichen?

I suppose that if I never saw a Coke bottle fall from the sky and land at my feet thrown by a pilot à la "The Gods Must Be Crazy," then I would walk to the ends of the earth to rid of it too.

Same principle applies to the Albatross not being able to distinguish plastic from fish.  The Pacific Ocean is littered with everything from toothbrushes washing up on Hawaii beaches to worn tires tossed into the ocean as well as syringes, medical waste, etc.

Why POTUS' don't deploy services and exercise their power to clean up the planet is beyond me!

At the rate that the planet spins on its axis every 24 hours revolving around the sun every 365 days, humans are spinning their wheels twice and three times as fast just to leave their mark on a one day overgrown tarmac with humans in extinction.

An Unofficial Super's Job is To Not Let It Bother You Too Much:

1. tenants have almost burned the place down resulting in my calling the fire department on one occasion: the 3rd floor apartment filling with smoke from a 2nd floor fire; 

2. tenant has opened all the windows in their apartment and put the heat on 90 degrees on 14 degree nights;

3. tenants have left mountains of trash behind numerous times;

4. tenants have had all night raging parties;

5. tenants have blamed me for going into their apartments and masturbating on the floor and stealing a pack of cigarettes;

6. tenants have blamed me for running into their vehicles;

7. tenants have short changed me on the CABLE TV and INTERNET apparatus here;

8. Tenants have sold to pill poppers out the front door.

9. Tenants have counted four 20's into a 100 saying they thought them 25 dollar bills when asked why they were short changing.

10. Tenants have had pets that shit all over the apartments, basement and yards for me to clean up or get cleaned up.

11. Tenant was paid 850 cash to just move out and never come back after he says to me that he is going to fuck me fuck my family and god is going to get me.

12. Tenants hijacked a cable account that I have paid 200/month for 12 years here with the cable company calling my apartment "illegal" refusing to reconnect me without proof from landlord that it is not illegal.

13. Tenants have clogged toilets in need of repair so that human shit needs to be cleaned while in a space suit with mask and toothbrush.

14. Corroded plumbing resulted in 100,000 flies on the property throughout the apartments until the plumber could come the next week.

15. Third floor apartment is a fire trap with tenants' objects in hallway exits.

16. Tenants don't want me clearing snow in the driveway after 12 years of clearing snow here.  Tenants said that they would call for someone else.

17. Tenants claim lease rights in parking during bans without regard to other tenant schedules and leases.

18. Tenants knock on the door complaining of the slightest overhead noise such as something dropping on the floor in the third floor apartment.

19. Tenants have accused me of "starting small fires" in the yard over my discarded filterless cigarettes burning out in grass or snow.

20. Tenants over 12 years have discarded mountains of non-biodegradable cigarette butts into the yard and in the garden that I clean up regularly.

21. Tenant complains of smoke in her apartment five minutes after I go upstairs from downstairs and find a filter cigarette butt on the front door mat that someone else smoked minutes beforehand.

22. Tenant accuses me of stealing heat when I live on the floor above and I have to explain to the tenant that "heat rises."

23. Tenant allows in strangers with keys to the door so that I have to write down license tag and report it. 

24. etc.

Sticking It:

"What about that needle in your pocket?"

"Needle?  What needle?  You mean like a syringe?"

The doctor nods.

"I don't have a needle in my pocket."

"OK.  You can go back on the ward," the doctor says closing a binder in front of him on a desk in a room off a ward hallway.

Richard stands up, opens the office door, walks down the hallway and enters a common room where other patients are seated in all of the cushioned seats while the TV murmurs approved watching.

He stands between the nurse station desk and the lounge area where all the other patients are seated without a seat available for himself and he notices one patient sit at a table alone with one chair pulled up to the table, slumped: head and shoulders on the table while seated.

(She had been out on a day pass the same day as Richard and they had flirted in the gymnasium of the hospital on break from treatment the previous week, while staff observed.  They had stretched on a basket ball court in the gymnasium while other patients shoot hoops).

"Wake up, Jen!" a nurse chimes from the nurse station desk.

"But, I told you.  I didn't do it," Jen says perking up off of the table on which she is slumped.

"Yes, you did.  Look at you!  You are here two more days and then going with them."

"No.  I told you.  Someone must've slipped the needle in my pocket."

"Then, why are you like that?"

Richard retreats to his room.  He leaves the florescent-lit, common room passing the office in a hallway on the ward where he had been interviewed by the weekend doctor upon reentering after a day pass: the same day that Jen takes for a pass and is back on the ward before Richard.