The sparrow and the jay

At first, I thought it was a squirrel: the darkish gray-brown undercoated in white. But when it fell from the trees above the stone wall, followed by a flash of feathered blue, I saw the angled appendage that wasn’t squirrel-like.

Too soon, it lay on the sidewalk; too soon, its body covered (rescued?) by another creature, unlike it in coloring, unlike it in size. The bird, a jay, was bigger. Not a squirrel at all. The angled appendage was a wing, broken. The jay did not swoop to rescue, but to attack. The smaller, squirrel-colored creature: a sparrow.

Later, I search. I find that jays are omnivorous, relatives of the crow.

Knowing this does not ease the sense that, in Shadyside, just one block from Mellon Park, where young men and women stroll and sprawl, books open, on the lawn; dogs strain on leashes, sniffing at something half a pace ahead; children tumble and laugh, framed by the cowboy sculpture on the rise, murder is committed on the sidewalk as rush hour traffic crawls slowly by.