Archive for December, 2007

Paint chips have collected for decades, at the base of the once-red steel supports, underneath a concrete underpass, where the train stops. A pigeon the color of concrete arrives. It has frayed feathers, as though the bird is dissolving. It seems oblivious to any human presence there. Eddies of dust sketch themselves in the breeze. The bird walks in a circle, stops, pecks at nothing, and walks in an opposite circle. Its eyes are like pebbles.

This bird only has one foot. Its amputated limb must have been like a rubber stamp, step-stamping red impressions on the concrete, but the leg had long ago blackened like asphalt, and the red spots below it now are only flakes of red paint, or rust.

The train arrives. Passengers embark. That one-legged pigeon flies low and away, to peck at some other place.

Downtown, the gulls dive wildly. They aim, perhaps, for some bit of leftover fried breading, or leftover lake trout sandwich. But the gulls dive too low. They smash against rooftops, the sides of busses, or windshields. Wipers scrape against blood and small fractures. Traffic flows impeded by dozens of slight delays, bumps in the road.

At noon, an announcement is broadcast to explain that the city’s waste management services will add a collection of the animals to the weekly garbage regimen, as a public service. The national economy adjusts to a sudden rise in the demand for new glass. A prominent national league cancels the evening’s athletic activities, due to the littered field.

The evening news interviews local residents. One of them carries a ruined umbrella. None of their conjecture about the birds is conclusive. Local authorities are unavailable for comment. Helicopters take flight to survey the altered scene below: the sidewalks are littered with bags to be collected. The news is that the pigeons and gulls were alone in this. Swallows, owls, geese, chickadees, sparrows, canaries, orioles and even the great American Bald Eagle: none of them sing, fly, scream or swim. Some of them are consuming each other. Others, losing their eyes, starve. Every bird is gone.

At night, huge fires burn the bodies of birds, to keep vermin from pecking at them – to keep diseases out of the water.

At dawn, the sky is void of all but the helicopters and a single, frayed cloud.