I couldn't get the image out of my head, so I'll write it. I had been riding along in a green forest-service truck, and the driver was talking about all kinds of "waste-birds" -- crows, starlings, gulls.
The gulls were the worst, he said, they would cover the field all white when he turned it over -- digging around for bugs and whatnot. "Shit, we hated them dammed things. We'd sit on the back of the tractor with .22's and just picked em off, one by one. Then we'd plow them under."
Then, sensing my ecologically correct attitude, he said "they eat up all the eggs. They did a study, where they put poisoned eggs in dummy nests, and killed off a whole load of 'em, and you know what? The waterfowl population that year doubled. I hate them dam birds."
"I remember seein' em, dead, around the sewage-treatment plant. I guess they'd get into the used condoms. They'd pull 'em out of the treatment ponds, and then couldn't digest 'em"
The image seared into my brain, like a hot brand. Now to get it out...
A slick commotion of white & grey features, bright beak & eye lowered down to the surface of the roiling shit-stew, dredging a worm-looking thing, transparent neon orange, from the muck. Then swallowing it down as it flew away, it tasting not only like the sewage below, but with a texture meaty and satisfying. It felt good and substantial in the stomach. The seagull flying away, full and satisfied.
A couple days later, the same seagull stumbling around on the cement next to the piping & meters at the treatment pond. It's hot out, and the bird is delirious from all the toxins re-circulating in his bloodstream, the rubber lodged somewhere in its lower intestine, plugging him. His world sways & flashes & drops about him as the delirium gets worse.
Soon, an organ just pops, ruptures -- the pain increasing to a pitch unimaginable to our culture anatomies. The shock aiding it to pull free of the strong magnetic attraction of the body, of matter, and allowing it to fly away, towards the sun -- the big garbage dump in the sky.
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3 comments:
WOW that was fucking rough to read... very nice writing my friend.
It's a trip to see what I chose to do writing exercises on while I was up there. A real trip.
Hope the "rough" was the subject matter and not the presentation.
Hell, this is a journal of first-drafts, I can't expect much out of the presentation either!
rough was the subject, i thought the read was smooth. it is hard that we do so much to the animals and suffer not at all ourselves
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