Breakfast in the Amma Ashram, you’d always have to be on your guard against the eagle. His preen of plumage, a red muddy brown, his head was white.
The dining hall/café was a roof supported on pillars, open on all sides to the elements.
The westerners would queue for morning coffee, a bleary natter.
There were always the clean up squad of crows. They’d loudly dispute the fate of leftovers. Bovver boy squabbling over the scraps. In India, in the curious absence of seagulls, they burlied into the same evolutionary niche. Cantankerous Scavengers!
The eagle made his breakfast time perch atop the pillars.
From here he’d regally peer down. A glance of disdain for rice, iddli and samba. Yet he was rather partial to omelettes and cheese sandwiches. A glutton for protein.
Down he’d swoop. A full stretch talon snatch.
The startled shriek from his victim, the tumult of oohs and aahs from his appreciative audience echoing around, and back down from the roof
away he’d be with his omlette booty, a reel around, a couple of lazy feathered flaps and back to his perch
Woe betide the unwary. Those not on their guard for a predator strike.
He’d grab from a plate, else more in yer face spectacularly, pluck from your fingertips. Marine, my French friend had her omlette snatched whilst I was sitting next to her. Swift, precise, immediate and feathered there. Nobody argues with an Eagle.
