The beautiful scavenger picks at the bits of what's left from another creature's mad dash across the street.

Heavens, the scavenger is lovely. Enough to be on the vision board of a designer somewhere. The bedroom designed in her likeness would have azure accent pillows. The dress inspired by her form would have a train that trailed the ground.

A flash of white and she alights. At first it seems so unlikely that this lovely creature would be the one finishing the remnants of bloody muscle half flattened on the center line. But the two more of her kind are standing guard on the nearby fence say otherwise, that this place is enough frequented by prey meeting tires to warrant a few hours of observation. She soars quietly to join her companions. Waiting until my car is past so she can come back and finish.

Scavengers make their lives on the leavings. The thought of such a life forms my face into a grimace without direction; I find it repulsive without knowing quite why. But then, to some degree I suppose all of us live on what remains. The sun’s left-behind energy grows the plant I consume. In turn, these plants, feed animals that we also eat. We are farther removed from the process that a dead ground squirrel on the road, but the process is largely the same.

Does it make her less beautiful what she consumes? Does it make me less ugly with what I don't? There is some creature that delights in anything, even the messiest left-behinds.

The end of that creature lying in the road is not an end, really, because the scavenger will live another day (provided she avoids the likes of me). She will, perhaps, go back to sit on an egg that will then swirl into another flash of white.

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