Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

A sliver of silver moon hang over the western hills.

The quail are settling down for the night.

Little bedtime conversations barely audible from beneath the Mormon tea bushes.

I had a strange encounter the other day. Left me feeling real bad for a while I was driving

and this big red-tail hawk was swooping up from catching its dinner a

cotton-tail bunny.

But the hawk was so low over the road that I had to stop to avoid hitting it.

And the commotion, unfortunately, caused the hawk to drop the little rabbit, and I just felt like hell for everyone involved.

The hawk likely went hungry, the rabbit likely died anyway.

And as I was just at that moment driving away from home,

it occurred to me that the redtail was almost certainly one of the pair that lives in a rare tall tree behind the radio studio.

A couple years ago, last spring, the spring before, they all run together these past few years.

I saved one of their youngsters who landed hard on his first attempt flying down from that big tree.

It was dazed, standing around the patio.

Very quickly, the ravens were on the roof, ready to kill it.

How those ravens annoy the red tails.

So I stayed out there with that bigfoot young hawk for a number of hours.

Running off the ravens, whenever they came back.

Eventually the young Red Tail got its wits again and perched on the bench with me for a while.

Every time it got close, I moved to the other end of the patio. Just a way of saying,

...