From my window, watched a red cardinal eating a bug too large for its mouth.

In Virginia, red cardinals are a symbol of local beauty, native fauna. People have them on their license plates. When the Carolinas were hit by storms, a number of popular folk musicians contributed to a charity record to raise funds for the relief effort. The record was called 'Cardinals at the Window'. When I first moved here, they were one of the first birds I noticed. Almost impossible not to notice. Splashes of moving red between the pines. Zips of primary colour. Cartoon beaks. Black patches round the eyes. Anvils for heads. Nothing mottled.

This bird is next to my neigbour's car. The bug it's eating is alive. It prizes chunks of shell, jerking, uncaring - we talk of animals 'caring' or 'not caring' as if there were only two options - scattering bits of beetle all over the drive. The wriggling continues, then stops. The bird keeps trying to swallow what's left. It puts it down, rips, tries swallowing again. At one point, I looked away for only a second or two, I can't remember why, and when I looked back the bug was gone, then the bird. Now, nothing is there.

Always plenty to see outdoors. Never forget the world is bountiful and cruel. I wonder if the two are linked. You can't have one without the other. Yesterday, they elected a new pope. If I showed him exactly what I've seen, what would he say?

I think of being wiped out. Danger on a satellitic scale.

Birds must be used to swallowing things that are still living. You often see them with beings crawling in their beaks. Stuff must try to crawl up and out their throats all the time. I wonder if they can feel it, or if it bothers them the way it would bother us. Imagine something you swallow trying to climb back out. Something with lots of legs. I'm thinking of the scene in Old Boy where the man attempts to eat a live squid. Does he attempt it, or does he actually succeed? As far as I understand, the squid is real. Real, as in, real. Not just real in the film. The actor is using a live squid on set. Everyone remembers that scene, but I don't remember how it ends. I've only seen the film once. I was young. I don't think it made that much of an impression on me. That can't be true. Why am I thinking of it now?