What was that!!??

The morning of Oct. 25th started out as any other.  I got up and exercised on my treadmill, and after getting John and the kids off to school, I was at the computer watching/doing an arms exercise video before waking up the little ones for breakfast.  I was in the middle of doing my exercises when I heard a loud thump on the front door.  My first thought was that there were some teenagers on their way to school who were throwing pumpkins at our house. (Zander ended up with 25 pumpkins from his one plant in the garden this year, and some of them were not that big.)  My second thought was that a dog was chasing a cat or something and chased it right into the door.  (The thump came from  lower on the door.) I decided to ignore it for the time being and finish up my arm video before investigating.  When I was finished, I cautiously opened the front door to see what the damage was.  Something moved quickly down the steps which scared me to death.  I closed the door and had to calm myself down before investigating further.  When I had gathered my courage I opened the door again and something flew to the edge of the lawn.  When I looked down the steps, this is what I saw:

Interesting, huh? I looked out to the lawn and saw this:

A falcon had chased down a pigeon and ran it right into our front door, which killed it or stunned it enough to be killed.  Crazy!!!  That was not something I was expecting to see!  After grabbing my camera, I sat and watched it for quite a while while it plucked feathers and began to eat breakfast.

I took a picture of our door. Because we have the fabric monster cover on the door,  you can see the white spot where the bird(s) hit. 

I checked on the falcon's progress throughout the morning.  It was there for over an hour.  I left it eating, and went to my exercise group at the church.  This was all that was left when I got home.  A pile of feathers and part of a pigeon.  I called John at school to let him know he had a little clean up project when he got home. :) 

I had to go run a few errands around town after lunch, and when the kids and I went outside, the falcon was back!  Guess he got hungry again.  When we came outside, we scared him and he grabbed the pigeon in his talons and flew to the neighbor's huge tree.  Problem was that with the pigeon in his talons, he couldn't land in the tree and both fell to the ground.  He wasn't letting go of his kill for anything!  It was quite humerous.  Not something I ever thought I'd see on my front lawn!