Driving up to Mississinewa Reservoir, on the Slocum Trail, on the way to let the dogs out (yeah, it was me. Glad that "?song?" is buried. Although it's probably playing on a loop tape in hell, along with some Barry Manilow and Journey), we came up a rise and the world was filled with a Turkey Vulture in glide, thirty feet away and ten feet up. A Turkey Vulture's wing span can approach six feet, much wider than your car.
As I slowed even more, a red tail came up off the south berm and headed north, a few feet away, without whatever it had, so the vulture was successful.
I'm sure, or hope, that other people see this kind of stuff all the time, but I surely feel gifted.
As if it mattered, there were few birds about, none I could identify.
There was an arbitrary line between beans and corn, and what I thought was a kestrel went off a wire after something as I approached, but stayed with it, and I couldn't see any sign of predator or prey.
When I was in junior high I had a paper route, and took advantage of an offer to subscribe to some magazines for about ten cents a week. Two, Argosy and True, men's magazines are, sadly, no longer with us.
Another, Field & Stream, was cautioning, fifty years ago, about the loss of game habitat as fences and fencerows were removed from farmfields.
A reason was more efficient harvesting left little reason to turn farm animals out.
Another was the rise in confined animal feeding operations, beastial, malevolent, wasteful, artificial, growth sites that wreck the environment and build viral immunity to the eight (as in eight) remaining, effective antibiotics.
This crap is necessary, as cattle, even with four stomachs, cannot digest grain, which is the staple CAFO feed. And hogs live on slotted floors above a pool of their own waste.
Never mind chickens, who lead the most horrible lives, from egg to slaughter.
All to feed our insatiable appetite for flesh.
And it ain't healthy.
Along with me, wonder how a nation that can't keep track of four hijacked airliners can assure you that a cow gone mad was actually from a specific farm in Canada?
The fences are gone except for the Amish, and gone, too, are the quail, pheasant, and rabbits.
I may have seen the last pheasant in Tipton County, IN, as they were all gone by 1964.

There was a red tail on a utility crossbar, who availed himself of the opportunity of our passing to soar and loop back to the exact same spot.
And, just as there were trees along the road, I spotted a red tail on high, 600 feet, cruising.
Damn trees. But don't worry, we're fixing that, too.