At the beginning of time the snow fell in great flakes like white goose feathers, soft and slow. 

Two peregrines watched their prey from far above, firmly settled with a talon grip to an out crop of rock just below the great mountain peak.  They peered at those below as they contemplated their trip south. 

“I wonder how they think, those who live beneath the ground and are our summer food, when they venture and scurry in fear of us.” 

“Funny you should ask.  I had just caught a terribly old squirrel just the other day.  He was far too stringy to eat, so, I held him down and said I wouldn’t devour him if he would tell me of their little lives.  He said he had hoped such a miracle would occur.  

I said, ‘What is this hope I have never heard of it?’  He said, ‘It is one of our three great virtues, faith, hope and charity.’  ‘Well, I hate to be a bird brain, but, please keep it simple, let us, stay with this ‘hope’ stuff, explain to me please, as we have agreed.’ 

Well, as you might imagine the little rodent was quivering and almost convulsing his little heart was pounding so hard, but he acquiesced to my humble request.  I couldn’t fathom what he said but this was the gist of it: 

‘Well’, he said, ‘in the spring when the mighty river rises, we hope it doesn’t come up so far as to flood our burrows and drowned us.’   

Why don’t you move your burrows to the high ground, like we fly to the south when the weather beckons, I queried. ‘We have hope, so why move? And if we drowned it is the fault of chance.  If we moved we might make a mistake and the river might not rise.’  That makes no sense, I said shaking my head, the river comes up every year when the snow melts and the ice breaks. 

‘Well’, he said, ‘how about, when we come up from our burrows, we hope you don’t see us, so you won’t eat us.’  Why don’t you scurry faster and not stand at your burrow door like a statue?  ‘why?, when we have hope.’ 

I still don’t understand, says I, what hope is or does for you. 

‘Well, say the times are tough and there is little food, we hope for a miracle so our sickly little one’s will not starve, like as I hoped this day not to be eaten.  That should explain it.’ 

No, I says, this hope makes no sense, you don’t seem to have a life of your own or any responsibility for your being.  It’s no wonder you are quarry.  But I will do you a favor. 

‘What?’ he says. 

I’ll show you some charity and put you out of your miserable existence with your hopes.  I was laughing pretty hard.  

He says, ’but you promised not to eat me.’ 

And I won’t, says I, as I pecked his meaningless, useless, heartless, heart out and left his hopeless body for the snows.”