The crows are back at lunchtime!

I walk to the courthouse downtown, which is just a block from where I work, downtown, on my lunch-break. It’s an attractive building, with lots of quiet green-space, so it’s fun to wander around, listening to music and munching on foods.

But the main reason I go to the courthouse on my lunch break is to feed the crows. There’s a family or two that live right around the area, and for a couple of years now, I’ve been seeing them semi-daily, to give them handfuls of peanuts as they swoop and jump around me. They don’t quite trust me, but they’re curious, and they love a free meal.

Since the winter settled in though, I’ve had no crows at lunch-time. It’s simply too dark; crows go to bed early, as they have poor night-vision. They need to be tucked away in their nests before the sun has fully set. As such, since the time change and the coming of the shorter days, no crows.

But today, for the first time since winter set in, the crows were still up, and playful, and hungry, as I went on my break. There were three following me up the block as I came within range, and within a few minutes of feeding, there was a murder almost 20 large gathered around, calling out and snacking away. I don’t know where they all came from, but they showed up in hungry, pestering droves, for a good few minutes.

I emptied my pockets out, literally, spilling dust and crumbs onto the pavement for quick little beaks to sneak up. I fed every crow I could, and I watched them play on the wind like the horrible little winged monkeys that they are.

Such brilliant, beautiful little creatures.

It feels silly sometimes, being a grown-man who actively feeds birds on his lunch-break, filling the pockets of my trench-coat with peanuts… But it gives me a great sense of peace of spend time with the birds, to feed them and watch them grow up big and strong. 

Super-intelligent animatronic birds surround me; better than the real thing, or so they say when you’ve got faith no more.

Hell, faith is better than the real thing, if you know what I mean. 

Super-intelligent animatronic birds are taking flight. They’re lighter and more energy efficient than real birds. They smell like hot metal, and they have their own agendas. No nests to keep, no young to rear. They’ve got solar panels stitched into their feathers, and eyes that can see for miles.

For miles and miles and miles I’ve been crawling my way back to you, with broken bones and broken bottles in my skin and broken promises echoing all around myself, like so many lies I had to tell myself, you understand I had to tell myself, in order to keep going, so I wouldn’t lose sight of the end I had in mind, so I wouldn’t lose faith, or face.

Super-intelligent animatronic birds fill the air around me, and they fill the air with their songs. Pop music from the late nineteen-nineties, mostly, which I don’t much mind. Though you can barely make out any individual indie songs amongst the racket of it all. 

Yeah, I said I’d kill for you, but I never washed the dishes much. I said that I’d die for you, but how many times did I vacuum, take out the trash, do the laundry. I wanted to be so tough, but you had to kill most of the mice we found squirming on the glue-traps; if I had to do it, I’d just cry and cry and cry like joggers doing aimless circles around the park, around and around and around. Things repeat. Tracks on repeat, like bird songs going on over and over and over again.

Super-intelligent animatronic birds. They’re watching my every move. 

She say it’s an art project.

There’s a sort of ‘pop’ sound, and then a splash of colour in the air - green, tinged with red and grey. It all rains down.

We get bird feed, and soak it overnight in something that makes birds very sleepy. Then she takes the bird-feed to the library, the big one downtown.

An old lady screams. A child cries. Feathers and paint on the pavement.

She goes after the pigeons. They’re quite friendly. They fall asleep very quickly, and nobody notices what she’s doing.

There isn’t even time for the bird to make it sound. One moment it’s there, and the next, it’s gone. 

The vests slip onto the birds quite easily. She designed them herself. There’s an interior pocket that holds the cordite and the timer, and an exterior pocket that holds the paint. 

There’s a smell like a quick fire, and then the unmistakable odor of paint. 

The once the timer goes off, the bomb is armed, but the bomb won’t go off until the bird is at about ten feet up into the air. She’s got them set that way, something about measuring the number of wing-beats per second, or something complicated like that.

There’s a bursting sound, and then an unholy downpour of bird bits. Burned up bird bits, and house paint.

She says it’s an art project.
But I think she just doesn’t like pigeons.