Duck!

My father collected ducks. When he was younger, he used to hunt ducks. I hated when we had to eat them at dinner, as they were so full of shot. As my father got older, he acquired an aversion to hunting, instead he would just wander in fields, looking at the ducks as they gathered.

Later still, he began collecting images and sculptures of ducks. All I have left of my father now, is a small carved duck that sits on my desk.

Turkey

A turkey will drown, they say, as it gazes up at the rain clouds, its mouth open in wonder.

Chicken

They killed all the chickens in the battery. Then they took them all to the market. It was okay to eat them. They said they were no danger dead, only alive.

I think the chickens would not have agreed.

Burrowing Owl

The crows were crowing. A storm of crows gathering over the cottonwood trees next to the pond, and even the two resident mallards were joining in, as the trees filled with outraged birds.

It wasn’t about food, although they tend to fight over dinner.

I look into the trees and I see a smallish owl sitting on a branch looking all sleepy, rousted in the daylight by the vigilante crows. I am surprised to see this little owl so off course. It shouldn’t be here, in the downtown eastside. It should be on a farm hunting field mice, living in an abandoned barn. It is another world away from this urban place.

The owl is all pulled into itself and I can’t stand to watch. Normally I love crows but some things make them unreasonable. Bigoted, I guess. The ducks didn’t much like the owl either. I shoo the crows away, inadvertently startling the owl and they all fly away. The crows in hot pursuit.

I read the owls future in the sky. Hunted, with no place to alight, it will fly until exhausted and then it will fall out of the sky.

Cedar Waxwings

The yellow underbelly of the cedar waxwings flash in the sunlight as they fly from split level house to split level house, looking for trees in this barren landscape.

At my family house, they stop, perch above me. I glory in them, looking up through the bare branches of the large maple, I see the sun of their bellies. And then suddenly, as if in unison, they shit on my head.

Cuculidae

Starling

Chic-a-dee

In the spring, the chic-a-dees will come down from the mountain. They are trusting little birds. If you hold you hand out with some seeds, they will land on your hand and feed. Their touch is so featherlight and quick. One minute it's there and the next it's gone.

Afterwards, you can't remember exactly what it felt like, only that you remember it was alive.

Brds hate Us

Birds hate us.

Wild birds are organizing.

Chickens and ducks plot revenge.

... and turkeys are not as dumb as you think.

Westnile

A woman, now paralyzed, said they should have warned her about the pool. They should have warned her about the mosquito larva in the pool.

When the Spaniards came to sack the new world. They had to bury themselves in the sand when they landed in Florida. The mosquitos stung their eyes. The Spaniards were stranded, blinded and lost in the keys. Faces buried under sand.