I just saw a parrot get a Brooklyn Beatdown

joehill

when i was maybe 10 feet out of my door, i heard this incredible racket of squawking from the tree across the street. I looked up and in the top of the tree there was this giant beautiful hawk. I watched it for a second before realizing that it wasn't the hawk that was squawking, the green blob struggling in its claws was a parrot!!

i watched this for what seemed like a minute but was probably 10 seconds, as the hawk struggled to keep control of the parrot. all of a sudden, the hawk lost it and the parrot dropped like 30 feet like a rock and landed in the middle of the street.

then, the parrot got up, flew wobbily right over my head, and then crashed into the brick side of the house (not even a window!) and plopped to the stoop like 6 feet from me. i was pretty surprised at how big the parrot was, and it had a big hole in its neck sort of an inch underneath it's eye. by this time, the hawk has flown to the tree directly above me and is eyeing me and the parrot.

i am staring at this parrot and all these things flash through my mind: 'i should take this parrot to the vet up the street', then have a vision of the hawk attacking me if it thinks i am stealing its parrot, then realize i can't just not go into work because i am taking care of somebody's half-dead pet parrot all day.

so, i turn to keep going to the subway, then all of a sudden i hear the parrot squawking like crazy again. but it wasn't the hawk, the feral cat that lives on our block had pounced on the parrot! i felt pretty bad but i wasn't going to try to get the bird away from the cat. the hawk just kind of watched on as the cat continued to tear into the parrot as its squawking died out.

this woman from further up across the street came over to me and we were both kind of like 'uhh....' but i'm glad i talked to someone else and we sort of confirmed to each other that we did actually see what we thought we saw. she said that there are (were) are pair of wild parrots that live on our block! who knew?