It's Raining Grackles and Sparrows

On any morning that I drive to work I park my truck about a mile and half from my building and then walk. Walking is so completely foreign to Dallas that I have people who exclaim in shock, you walk to work? A half! mile! every morning? And when I respond that I walk that far any day that I don't take the bus, it starts a whole new conversation about the utter craziness I'm exhibiting when I ride the bus by choice. (Sigh, it a vicious cycle.)

Most days the walk is rather uneventful. Although, I have to be on high alert because Dallas drivers are all like, "Whuuuut's a peee-destri-ayun?" while they're turning left at ninety miles an hour without bothering to notice that SOMEONE'S IN THE CROSSWALK.

But pissy drivers have been the least of my worries because for the past two weeks it been something else. Something strange. Strange, as in two dead birds. The first bird was a half eaten carcass that could have been easily eaten by animal. I thought nothing of it until I saw this week's bird in the exact same spot as last week's. This week's bird was a grackle, or rather what was left of a grackle – the head and wings. There was a neatly severed head just lying on the sidewalk like when you would ripped off your Barbie's head. Then there were its wings which appeared to be ripped off at the shoulders. (do birds have shoulders? Whatever.) All of it was displayed ritualistically, although I am not an expert on rituals so how the hell would I know? Either way it was a little creepy.

My first thought was man I need to buy some more Street Wise newspapers because the homeless people are killing birds. My next immediate thought was how the hell did they cook the bird, I mean it's not something you can just walk into a restaurant with and say, I'll take this blackened with a side of mashed potatoes. (I cannot balance my checkbook, but I can have this entire conversation with myself in less than two blocks – go figure)

And then suddenly it hit me. They're back. The dead birds have found me.

You see a little over a year and a half ago I was confronted with more dead birds at my parents' house in Tulsa. It was 4th of July weekend, and I was hitching a ride with Travis, his wife Cyndi, and Nikki to Minneapolis. I was headed back to Mpls for my last quarter at Miami Ad School, and they were going for drunken debauchery.

They were scheduled to pick me up at 8 a.m., and for the first time in the recorded history of Travis giving me rides he was on time. Instead I was the one running late, and oh, I still had some packing to do. So there I was running around, apologizing profusely for my lack of preparedness, when I look down and see a dead bird on my porch. I was MORT. TIFIED. This was the first time anyone had seen my parents' house, and now the impression they were going to walk away was that we were the kind of people who just left dead animals to rot on our porch. Shocked and deeply embarrassed, I blamed the cat. I was nearing the end of my Oh-My-Goodness-My-Cat-Must-Like-You-Guys-Because-He-Gave-You-A-Dead-Animal Speech, when I glanced at Nikki to see that she was giving me the ol' shifty eye that says dude, look all around you.

Then in one of those slow-mo pans that only happen in movies, I looked out across my yard and saw it. The carnage! I counted about six dead birds in my front yard. SIX! My cat is good at catching live things, but he ain't that good. At this point I did what anyone would do – I went straight into denial. I was like, Okay, nothing to see here, ready to go to Minneapolis? Whoo hoo!

Along the 10 hour car ride when anyone brought up the fact that there were SIX! dead birds in my yard, I was immediately "TURN UP THE RADIO! Alright, I'm sorry I can't hear what you're speaking of."

Somewhere in Iowa, I alerted my mother to the ungodliness that awaited her in our yard. She called me the next morning and told me that they had found over 17 dead birds in the yard. AND ONLY OUR YARD HAD DEAD BIRDS IN IT.

Did you read that? Seventeen dead birds. My mom saved them and took them to the health department for inspection. The health department said nothing was wrong with them, oh and not to worry. Easy for them to say because they didn't have SEVENTEEN dead birds in THEIR yard. (Right then I swear I saw Robert Stack doing a story about me and the dead birds)

And now they're back. Following me. I've moved about 5 times since the initial dead bird bonanza, and clearly the dead birds have had to follow a few change of address forms to find me, but THEY HAVE.

Is it a plague or pox (singular pock?) or whatever that man upstairs can put on people? Is he up there right now going, "Yea, and I shall rain down on thee a plague/pox of thine winged fowl whom have touched death's door. And lo it will be weird?"

Or is it a string of unrelated causes like bird flu and a serial-killer-in-training (albeit hungry) homeless man?

Which begs the question, which is worse?