Oh yeah...

And here are a few snapshots I took on the 16th of June. I woke up at 5AM and just couldn't go back to sleep. The location is Codorus lake at the marina.

Roadkill Chronicles: Bird Kill

Birds are the extreme sports enthusiasts of the highway. It never fails. Whenever I’m driving anywhere, I have at least one bird who wants to tempt fate by nose diving somewhere in front of my car. I hold my breath every time. It’s not like I can swerve out of the way, I just have to hope this particular robin or starling has timed his performance perfectly.

Usually, the bird extends his wings and alights just a few inches or a foot away from my vehicle. A few times, they’ve even dropped a not so pleasant bird-bomb on my shiny blue car. That’s always a lovely addendum –insult to near injury.

Some birds fail as acrobats on the road, however; their lives ending in one of two ways. The first involves the bird hitting the windshield. While this is horrible as a driver, since one thinks the fowl is going to come straight through the glass, and one find oneself ducking although he is fairly well shielded by the vehicle. I can’t count how many times I’ve preemptively ducked behind the steering wheel because I fear the mourning dove is going to come through the windshield and smack me in the face in a bloody, feathery Alfred Hitchcock nightmare. If the bird hits the windshield, though, normally all one sees is the look of death at impact with perhaps a few twitches or some flailing as they go up over the glass to disappear behind the car or get hit again by the vehicle which is tailgating. If the other vehicle hits it, I just don’t feel as bad because I excuse myself –it wasn’t my car that finished the job. These are the bird corpses one sees flattened to the pavement with one wing up waving at passersby.

The more exciting death is actually more akin to an explosion. It’s not quite like the vaporization I have mentioned earlier, but it’s not entirely dissimilar either. Birds are small, light, and it’s not quite as surprising when they explode on the grill of one’s car (unlike the aforementioned deer which is large and meaty and, well, I’m sure we’re both still working on erasing those mental scars). It’s actually a little like a surprise party or a pillow fight. OK, perhaps not so exciting as a surprise party, but all one really sees is a great poof of feathers after one hears the twang of the bird hitting the grill. Depending on velocity and location, these feathers can come up over the windshield –momentarily blinding the driver –or they go under the car in a spray making the car look like it hit a star in a Mario game, though one doesn’t become invincible.

It’s an interesting affect, and I think a tribute to life. I mean, if I had a choice, I’d like to die like a daredevil and explode into a bunch of confetti, myself when I go. It has a startling affect, but for some strange reason, isn’t quite so gruesome as the unexplained vaporization kill or as sentimental as watching a pet kill.

Yeah, when I die, I want to blow up like a pillow stuffed with firecrackers.

Hashawa Observations IN CLASS

There are two catbirds which zip above my head. I’ve chosen a small break in the trees to rest and observe. At first, I thought they were both announcing my presenc with their cat calls, but then I realized there were precisely two. What I thought was the catbird’s harassment was really them courting each other between two trees. They’re a beautiful gray color, the color of dark storm clouds, not mottled or patchy, but solid, like a steel guard.

In front of me stands the skeleton of a pine. The bark is starting to peel from the offwhite bones beneath like paper or dead skin, revealing the smooth wood that looks just like bone.

To my right, I hear a gentle whisper of a call which I cannot identify in the bushes. The two catbirds call in such a fashion that it is difficult to identify what the you-who sound might be.

And then there is a third catbird. I wonder if perhaps I had disturbing a next. They have me surrounded -one chirping incessantly behind me, another to my left and one to my right. I think if I listen closely I can hear a woodpecker in a tree top, but over these catbirds, who can hear anything? Is it just in their nature to harass? Are they Hashawa’s jesters? Are they the centries wom I must impress to observe another other natural occurrences? There’s no fooling them now that they’ve spotted me. I think they’ve even chased off all the other birds who might share my company. They’re getting so close, I think I might just start to take offense out their yelling at me.

I’m just sitting here, after all. I want to yell back at them as they scream and yell at me “HEY HEY HEY!” But if I do, I might miss something, like whatever it is that whistling a you-who to me. There are two of them -coming from two different sections. I think maybe they are tormenting me too, like some horrible game of marco-polo. I think they’re red-winged blackbirds, but I can only guess.

And then I hear a frog, but at first, I thought it was the growling of my stomach or a mourning dove, but it became clear it was coming from in the marsh. It must be a frog. And then there is another … woooahh—awooo… deep and low.

They’ve got me surrounded. I’d better give up soon or face the agony of defeat which constitutes as arms pocked with mosquito bites.