One dark, unblinking eye stares out at me, with a cold look of appraisal that reminds me of its reptilian ancestry. With a movement of its head, it shakes the serpent hanging limp from its beak, perhaps to make sure that the snake is in fact dead. For a moment, the bird grows in my mind’s eye to engulf me, that cold staring eye sucking me in, hypnotizing me. The shake of its head seems defiant, as though daring me to try and take its prize, and although it is silent all around, in my imagination I hear the harsh deafening cry of some prehistoric creature. While there is certainly no physical menace from this small heron, the scene itself seems to convey some primal threat, a powerful omen and symbolic warning. The violence of the
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