The Condor and the Coyote

A wise old condor sweeps the desert with an age old eye. Even as a distant witness, silently slicing the heat-soaked skies, it has seen far too much. Life has taken its toll. Feathers ruffled, he is perched awry, like a fallen angel upon a barren rock. The primal instinct has long gone. The critter is waiting to die.

He makes no sound. Now and again he opens his beak and swallows the dusty air. Sand glitters on the ground. The clouds are thin in the azure sky.

And then he notices the coyote.

The condor knows the shamans believe that the spirit of the coyote brings evil into the world. Always wary, ready to strike at the unwary.

Sure footed the predator approaches with a cautious sniff at the still bird, trying to smell a death that would signal an end to his ravenous hunger.

The condor does not move. Even though there are no chains keeping him tied to his resting place and against his nature, the condor waits.

He has mapped the horizon plenty of times. He has notched up the air miles of a lifetime. Now is the moment to die, he decides to himself, waiting for the fellow carnivore to seal his fate.

And yet, possibly even more unnaturally, the coyote does not make a move to kill. He stops and stares questioningly at the bird.

"Great condor? Why do you not fly away?" asks the coyote.

"Yesterday I was the hunter. Today I am the hunted. This is our way."

The coyote nods in agreement. "Yes, but why do you submit so easily?"

"Because there is no more hunt left in me."

"Do you not want to live old bird?"

The condor gives a squawk. "Life is not to live in, it is to live out... and I have lived mine out. I have marveled at the flash of a firefly in the night. Counted the icy breaths of a buffalo in the wintertime. Chased the little shadow which runs across the desert grass and loses itself in the sunset."

"And this was enough for you?"

"No. It made me want to see more. So I flew further away to the cities. I felt terror at the flashes of bombs in the night. Counted the icy breaths of their homeless in wintertime. Chased the tall shadow of man that hides itself in concrete boxes and loses itself in the night. And that was enough."

The coyote takes another step forward, cautiously wheezing, "I hear that the meat of a cynical bird is tough. Maybe I should search for tender meat."

The condor's eyes flicker angrily. "Our beak's are even tougher. All the better to rip out rude tongues with."

The coyote hisses a laugh, and his drooling tongue lolls out, hungrily, "You are wrong about life. We succumb to life more easily than we do to death. It is in our nature to kill each other, but not to lay down and die."

The condor smiles and squawks. "Yes, I saw this in the cities of men, too. But we are in the desert, and what is the nature of life here but that ultimately what you do to me will be done to you."

The coyote takes a small step forward. "Maybe so, maybe not."

"You will kill me today, and you will be killed tomorrow. We are all joined but by one thread. It is the web of life. And life says that every debt must be repayed."

There is something in which the old bird says that upsets the coyote. Feeling a distinct loss of apetite, he says, "I will let you live today great condor. May you die in your sleep."

"And may you wake from yours. For who can say who has let who live?"

The condor gives a final squawk, loud enough to compete with a thunder roll during a desert storm, and returns to the azure blue of the sky.

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