During the past few days, my husband has found dead squirrels in our yard. They haven't died of natural causes. There is a juvenile red tail hawk who has been feeding at the neighbors' bird feeder. It's been killing song birds. Rather than moving on, like most hawks seem to do, this hawk has now been coming into our yard looking for prey.

That has meant a major change in our life style. The dogs now have to be kept indoors; except to go potty. Plus when they do go out to relieve themselves, one of us (and sometimes both of us) has to go out with them to protect them. Because the hawk has become increasingly bolder, this situation has become quite stressful for all. The girls are used to spending a large part of their Summer days outside with me. Now, they have to sit indoors and longingly look out the patio door. And I no longer have companions for when I'm outdoors doing photography.

It's bad enough for us humans to be stuck in stay-at-home social isolation.
Now, our dogs have lost their freedom, too, due to a danger to their lives.

Again, I'm not going to relate detailed COVID news today. The general summery is that things are getting a lot worse in the USA. Many places across America, that have opened their economies, are being forced to close down again. Official Stay-at-Home mandates are starting to again be put in place; taking many parts of the country back to where we were in April when COVID was at its original peak.

That doesn't change anything much for us. But this new hawk problem certainly has. Now, there is little relief from the stress of COVID confinement. Instead, we have the additional stress of worrying about a killer hawk. It spends a great deal of the day flying between the neighbors' & our yard. Plus the hawk is almost constantly calling out as it hunts for new prey. Chilling. It also doesn't eat the squirrels; it just kills them. In the many years we've lived here, I've never experienced anything like this before. But then, I've also never before experienced a virus pandemic raging through the world. 2020 is a year that won't be forgotten.

When will life ever be normal again?