A Missing Relative and a Peregrine Falcon

Expect the unexpected.


My missing relative is now safe and well after “escaping” from his wife as they drove through Italy. He walked away from the car with only his wallet and phone and the clothes on his back. Several people, myself included, received a brief phone call from him to say he was okay -- but he refused to tell anyone where he'd gone.

After searching for a month, his distraught wife eventually found him at a dilapidated farmhouse in southwest France. But he refused to speak to her, claiming a desperate need for peace and quiet. Several days later, he returned to their home.

That same day, after heavy rain, water started to pour through my bedroom ceiling. (I live on the top floor of a seven-storey building.) As I mopped up, the management company investigated the problem and found a Peregrine Falcon residing on the roof. It has been killing pigeons, plucking their feathers, eating the flesh, and discarding feathers and carcasses in the gutter above my bedroom... Wow!

Unfortunately, for health and safety reasons, I am not allowed up to the roof to look at the falcon. I once saw a large silhouette swoop down in front of my office window and realise it must have been this hunter. I now glance at the windows as often as possible, and am proud to have a falcon on my roof. :)

My no-longer-missing relative is getting on with his life as though nothing much happened.

“In Europe,” he told me, “husbands disappear all the time.”

Really?