Plague Journal, Alpha Predator
Yesterday morning family members peering into the backyard called to me, “quick come and look, a hawk is feeding on top of our wood pile.” Suspecting that I’d be too late, I pulled the flash card out of this laptop and inserted it into my camera. In the distance a solitary hawk was feeding upon a small animal or bird which it had taken. The hawk is at the top of the food chain, with few predators to threaten its well being. Perhaps a larger hawk, or a lucky raccoon might threaten a hawk. The hawk is a raptor, keen of eye, with an instinct honed for killing. The sharp talons of a hawk are deadly. A living thing within a hawks grasp comes to a quick end.
So it is with apex predators. The apex predator feels hunger, hunts, kills and eats. I checked the top of the wood pile later in the day. Only a blood stain and a few downy feathers remained.
Humans are apex predators, equipped with the sharpest talons of all nature, — those which reason, ratiocination can 
devise. Weapons, tools efficient for killing are sometimes called weapons-of-mass-destruction. Within the category just mentioned, I would include the AR-15, and of course the AK47. These are devised for killing humans on an industrial scale, like the talons of a hawk raised to a higher power.
Yesterday Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty by a jury of shooting three individuals, two of which died of their wounds from Rittenhouse’s AR-15. The argument propounded by the defense: Rittenhouse feared for his life, and thus defended himself. Rittenhouse then 17 years of age, armed himself with the assault rifle, to participate in the unrest roiling downtown Kenosha consequent upon the earlier killing of a black man in Kenosha. The situation on the streets that dark night were in general defined by potential and palpable threat to life.
In any case Joseph Rosenbaum was shot four times, was left where he fell. Anthony Huber, holding a skateboard was shot and left where he fell. Giage Grosskruetz, a paramedic was shot, and severely wounded immediately after the killing of Huber.
Homo Sapiens, the Apex Predator.
