"A bird," you say, still looking at your hands. Then, "a finch, or a mynah, I think."\n\nThe woman makes a sound of genuine pity that prompts you to look up. Then she starts talking with a thick Russian accent about how she sees them all the time, that it's probably the tall buildings with their huge glass windows, that the birds probably don't even see them. You nod.\n\nThen she puts a hand on your wrist and smiles. Her hand is cold and her skin is loose and soft. "Is good that you bury them," she says. "Thank you." Then she leaves and walks back across the street.\n\nYour heart swells a little. //[[Thank you]],// you think.

Lately you've been making an effort to feed the grackles specifically. They've begun to remember you; for the past week, every day at around two o'clock, you start to hear their bright, chirruping calls from outside. You'll go to look and there they'll be, perched atop the gaslamps and street lights and parking signs, twisting their heads this way and that, calling out, [[waiting to be fed]].

It's hard not to smile at the pigeons. Their big, ponderous bodies, their wobbling gait, their bobbing heads and warbling coos. There's no shortage of them in Savannah, and the River Street pigeons are bolder than most. They can be frustrating when you try to feed the other birds; they'll swoop in out of nowhere, six or seven strong, and hassle the other birds until they've entirely laid claim to a pile of crumbs. Still, it's impossible to be mad at them. They're just [[trying to survive]], after all.

You peel open the sleeve and take a few crackers out into your palm, crush them, and wait. You'll need to time it pretty well, but you trust in the perceptiveness of the birds that are swiftly approaching.\n\n[[Wait for it...]]

//There are so many species of bird in this world,// you find yourself thinking more and more often.\n\n//So many incredible, beautiful kinds of bird, with so many different ways to fly.//\n\n//And I had to be born [[human]].//\n\n<<set $birds = 0>>

You feel fortunate to work someplace like this; River Street is undeniably beautiful, especially when it's quiet. Usually, however, it isn't. Most days it's choked with vacationing tourists; jabbering Midwestern housewives, loud-mouthed fratpacks of muscle-armed marines double-fisting cups of beer, well-to-do white businessmen who would never deign to look someone beneath their [[economic class]] in the eye.

Days later you've finally taught the grackles to come to your balcony. You wait until you hear them outside, then step out with a sleeve of crackers and wait for the sentry atop the streetlight to turn his head your way. Then you crush up a few crackers and toss them down to the far side of the balcony. The sentry sees it, flies across the street, and begins to eat. Soon others have joined him, four then five, all eating hungrily and watching you. They won't be bullied by pigeons up here. It's just you and them. Any little move makes them jump, so you stay very still, not wanting them to fear you. You want them to learn.\n\n[[It works]].

Savannah, Georgia is a city slowly being reclaimed by nature. Trees grow tall and wild even in the most confined vacant lots and spaces between crumbling buildings. Creeping vines crawl patiently up nearly every wall. Spanish moss hangs, strange and weeping, from every tree and power line like some kind of fungal alien blood.\n\nAnd it is home to a great many [[birds]].

Later, your sole co-worker comes in to relieve you for the day. She's a student at SCAD, the local art university, who immediately endeared herself to you when she asked you what sort of stuff you write and responded to your answer of "horror stories" by suddenly turning, grinning, and saying "BAD-ASS!"\n\nNobody ever says that. Most of them just say "Oh," or "Aah." Then they change the subject.\n\nShe walks in, headphones loud, looking harried as always and carrying the breath of the city in with her.\n\n"Hey," she says.\n\nYou ask, "[[How do you feel about birds]]?"

One day, while walking through downtown to get to work at River Street, you come across a dead bird on the sidewalk outside of SunTrust Bank. It's small and beautiful, brightly colored, some kind of mynah or finch. Right in the middle of the sidewalk, directly in your path.\n\nYou reach down to pick it up. Dead birds are a common sight in Savannah, and you long ago resolved to [[bury]] every one you found.

After a while they've settled down, and you're holding an empty plastic cracker-sleeve in your hand. The few that remain are picking at the crumbs around your feet, occasionally lifting up their heads to look over you with those big, glassy black eyes. You still can't stop smiling.\n\nFrom nearby, you hear a voice, young and feminine, say: "These birds are the [[grossest things I've ever seen]]."

After two days of this, the grackles have learned. You can move around (slowly) and they won't flee. Some will even dart right up to you if there's a particularly large crumb right at your feet. Watching them, so close and active and inquisitive and wild and alive and //right there next to you,// is unlike anything you've ever experienced. You feel as though you're participating in a kind of communication that transcends species, understanding each other despite the complete disparity of your lives and perspectives.\n\nThere are ten grackles on your small balcony, all feeding, all watching you. Then you hear someone [[climbing the stairs]].

You wait.\n\nWait for "That's not your property, you little freak. I'm calling the police."\n\nWait for "Listen, you creepy little warlock, I'm with the Church and if I see you doing any more weird shit..."\n\nBut instead, she asks something that catches you off-guard.\n\n"[[What was it?]]"

Of all the birds on River Street, the grackles are your favorite. They're frequently mistaken for crows, though they are not genus //corvidae//. They're black, slender and fair-sized, with bright, inquisitive eyes and shining midnight-blue heads. The females are caramel-black and [[sweet]] as can be.

Birds

<html>by <a href="http://kittyhorrorshow.wordpress.com" target="_blank">Kitty Horrorshow</a></html>

One of the female grackles has a wounded leg. She hops around on one foot, generally keeping her distance from the larger group. Consequently she has a hard time getting to the food before the pigeons swoop in and usurp it. Feeling pity, you try your hardest to toss a few large bits of bread as close to her as possible. She eats, looks you over, and departs.\n\nThen the next day [[she's back]], waiting in the same spot.

They're very cautious birds, the grackles, but they're also curious. Several times you've gone down to the street and sat down on a curb while a grackle watched you approach. Then you threw out a hand-full of crumbled Ritz and the grackle immediately swept down to you, mere feet away, to take its meal. It lifted its head, puffed out its feathers and began to crow, then within moments you were surrounded by a score or more of the shining black birds, all watching you, trying to decide if you were friend or foe.\n\n//Friend,// you always think, //most definitely [[friend]].//

You find a dead sparrow one day when walking through one of the squares in the Historic District. Ants had already begun to stake their claim. //That's fine,// you think, //but you're going to have to find it underground.//\n\nYou pick up the body and look for [[a place to bury it]].

When they're just about right above you, you toss the crushed crackers up into the air and onto the red-brick sidewalk in front of you. Within an instant you are completely surrounded by a cloud of white feathers and beating wings. There are too many of them to count and they're beside you, in front of you, hovering above you, filling the air, calling out, eating, flying.\n\nYou can feel the cool gusts of air cross your face from the beating of their wings. They're that close.\n\nIt is one of the most [[amazing experiences]] of your life.

The sun is setting, turning the westward sky a firey orange beyond the massive bridge leading north to South Carolina. To the east, it's already night. You're sitting on a bench looking out over the water. Your bus doesn't come for another half an hour. You've got a whole sleeve of crackers in the crook of your arm.\n\nFar to the west but flying toward you, you can see a whole flock of seagulls, [[coasting]] right up along the riverfront.

A teenaged girl is standing with two of her friends, and they are all dressed like club-hopping twenty-somethings. You can smell the acrid chemical musk of her from where you're sitting. She's staring at the feeding gulls as though they were a bloody, dying creature dragging its carcass across the sidewalk. Her boyfriend, wearing a white polo shirt and backwards ball-cap, chuckles, 'huh-huh-huh,' puts his hand on her ass, looks down the loose neck of her top.\n\nYou think to yourself, //You don't really think that.//\n\n//You can't.//\n\n//You grew up surrounded by idiots who convinced you that birds were disgusting, but you aren't really looking.//\n\n//That thought is not your own.//\n\nShe turns, sneer still on her face, and the three of them [[leave]].

Just as you're nearly finished digging, you hear a voice from across the street.\n\n//"Escuse me! Escuse me!"//\n\n//Here we go,// you think. You hasten to complete the burial, thinking maybe you can claim you dropped something in the planter.\n\nA tall, gaunt [[elderly woman]] approaches you, eyes wide and blinking behind a thick-rimmed pair of coke-bottle glasses.

Having been landlocked for the first 24 years of your life, you'd never really experienced seagulls until moving to Georgia. Now they're among your favorite birds. They're big, loud, and obnoxious, but some of the most marvelous flyers you've ever seen. Their wingspans are comparatively massive, so they never have to flap too hard to maintain altitude. Most times they merely hold their wings out and coast, tilting slightly this way or that to curve away into the wind. Sometimes, when the wind is right, you'll see them just hovering midair, or even flying sideways. The overall appearance is that of a languid creature that has perfectly mastered its own dimension. Their keening cries are a vital part of the music of River Street when the [[sun begins to set]].

The human doesn't buy anything. It sees you staring out at the river and says "RATHER BE OUT THERE DRINKIN' BEER HUH?"\n\nThis insulting, misguided attempt at camaraderie just makes you want to go home and lie down.\n\nThe grackles don't come back for the [[rest of the night|feed the birds]].\n\n<<set $birds += 1>>

The squares are like small parks that dot the historical district, no shortage of trees and grassy terraces. Finding a place to bury this little one is a matter of walking to the nearest tree and digging at the roots. It only takes a few minutes, but it puts your mind at ease. The bird deserves rest.\n\nYou stand and turn and see three people [[staring at you]].

<<if $birds eq 4>>Most days you don't feel like you belong to this species. Their arrogance baffles and upsets you. They look at you like you're something low, something profane that upsets their white-polo-shirt iphone sunglasses throw-away-platefulls-of-food sensibilities. Most days you just go home and [[sleep]].<<else>>There are four kinds of bird on River Street-- the [[sparrows]], the [[grackles]], the [[pigeons]], and the [[seagulls]].<<endif>>

The aptly-named River Street is a mile-long stretch of east-west cobblestone that runs parallel to the Savannah River. It is fully two storeys closer to sea level than the next street south, and so it is only accessible by steep ramps and tall, centuries-old flights of stone steps. After descending such a flight, one is immediately transported to a picturesque antique gas-lamp district filled with ancient brick buildings, saxophone players, and giant ponderous freight-liners crawling along the water upriver to the nearby port. This is where you come to work [[every day]].

"Uh, //wow,//" says the tall blonde with wide eyes and a sarcastic sneer, "that's fucking //gross//." She and the plainly-dressed man and woman with her begin to laugh, then turn to leave. You are struck by the absurdity of the display. They behaved exactly like preppy characters in a shitty high-school TV show. And yet it was real. It really just happened. Real human beings really just //laughed// at you for caring about the death of a living creature, chewing gum and smacking their lips and [[laughing]].

She returns day after day, typically after the rest of the grackles have eaten and left, and simply waits on one leg at your spot while the sparrows pick at the smaller crumbs the grackles left behind.\n\nShe waits, and you go down to feed her, and she doesn't fly away when you get close. For this tiny bird you feel such compassion, such genuine love, that you decide to give her a name. //Annabelle//, you think. Sweet little darling.\n\nShe eats, considers you for several long moments, and then leaves you with a feeling of [[warm satisfaction]].

Even language is unkind to the birds that aren't considered conventionally beautiful. A //plague// of grackles. A //murder// of crows. An //unkindness// of ravens. The human predeliction for scrutiny, judgement and superiority is aligned against birds on a semiotic level.\n\n[[(Back)|climbing the stairs]]

The store in which you work is a rinky-dink tourist trap directly up a flight of stairs above a restaurant called the River House. Your inventory is exclusively useless, tacky bullshit; coffee mugs that say "Wake up and smell the coffee!"; bumper stickers with gems of Confucian wisdom such as "No Fat Chicks" and "Gun Control Is Being Able To Hit Your Target"; shotglasses, keychains, t-shirts, all with the obligatory "Savannah, GA" haphazardly emblazoned somewhere on them.\n\nIt's a hole of a place, but it's not a bad job. Having one customer an hour allows you a lot of free time. Time to read and write, time to play old DOS games, time to stare out at the water. And time to [[feed the birds]].

Really, a more appropriate ceremony would be to burn the tiny body into ash and spread it across a high wind. Burial confines things to the earth, which is antithetical to the life of a bird. But a body is just a shell, after all, and you feel obligated to give each one you find at least //some// kind of parting respect.\n\nThere's a large square planter nearby, home to a single anemic-looking tree and filled with rich store-bought soil. It's the best you're going to get here.\n\nYou lay the bird's body gently down in the soil, then begin [[digging with your hands]].

You're sitting down by the street watching as a cluster of pigeons gobbles up the remains of the food you initially laid out for the sparrows and grackles. They have such pretty little orange eyes, you observe when one bobs right up near you.\n\nA man walks down the sidewalk, walking right through the crowd of pigeons, not for an instant hesitating or breaking his stride or attempting to circumvent them. "Fucking hate birds," you hear him mutter, as though you aren't sitting right there.\n\nIt [[bothers you]] for the rest of the day.

And you don't dream much. You never have.\n\nBut most nights when you lay down, you shut your eyes and imagine the feeling of wings on your back.

Without skipping a beat, she says "I hate them."\n\nThen, for clarity, she adds "I think they're horrible, satanic devil-creatures. Like, if I see a bird on one side of the street, I'll cross to the other side. I can't stand them."\n\n"Oh," you say.\n\n"Why?" she asks.\n\n"Because I heard someone say they hated birds earlier today and it really bothered me."\n\n[[She laughs|feed the birds]].\n\n<<set $birds += 1>>

The grackles all leap over to the edge of the balcony, ready to flee. You look to the end of the balcony and see someone approaching. As soon as they make the last stair the entire [[plague]] takes wing and flies off right in front of both of you, a fluttering black cloud of wings and tiny gusts of wind that leaves you breathless.\n\nThe human, this tumescent, wheezing, frizzy-haired, gap-toothed creature, doesn't even notice. It feels no wonder at the thing which has just transpired less than a foot from its face, doesn't turn its head to watch them fly and wheel and swoop. It just looks at you and croaks, "[[GOT ANY TIE-DYEDS]]?"

You look at the gulls. One of them is looking at you.\n\nYou tell it, "[[I'm sorry.|feed the birds]]"\n\n<<set $birds += 1>>

The pigeons are far and away the most harassed of the city birds. Their tendency to try staying as close as possible to food means they're frequently close to humans, and humans see them as a nuisance, despite their harmlessness and benignity. Every day you watch children chase and grab and kick at them while parents laugh and capture it on their iPhones, no doubt thinking what a precious memory it is, little Aiden having [[fun]] with the pigeons.

Sometimes you wish you could transform into a twenty-foot-tall slavering pigeon monster and chase those kids around, kicking and drooling and guffawing at what a fun precious memory you're making.\n\nBut then of course, you'd be the monster. How could you do that to an innocent child, terrify and harass them like that?\n\nThe [[poor, innocent child]].

You do not like to be spiteful. Emotions like 'anger' and 'hate' and 'bitterness' are toxic things, and you hate to carry them around with you. You always try to be a better person.\n\nBut just now you find yourself hoping that when she dies she does so gracelessly, unbeautifully, in full view of everyone, and that everyone present refuses to touch her or treat her with decency.\n\nSick with yourself at thinking such a black, malicious thought, you brush off your hands and [[leave|feed the birds]].\n\n<<set $birds += 1>>

It's not like they're living creatures.\n\nIt's not like they're terrified because some creature many times their size is chasing after them.\n\nThey're //just birds,// after all.\n\nWhat a [[precious memory]].

There used to be several sparrows' nests in the nooks and crannies of the wall into which your store is built, but recent renovations have removed them. Still, enough crumbled-up cookies and crackers left out on your railing has secured your balcony in their memory as a place where they can get food. No other birds, excepting the grackles, will come up here to eat. The seagulls stay close to the water and the pigeons never go too far from the street. It's a good thing, too. You take special care to make sure they're fed. They're so meek and tiny that most of the other birds just run them off. It makes you happy to know that they're [[cared for]].

The sparrows are tiny brown-mottled little darlings with a high, peeping song. Their flight is at once swift and erratic; they don't hold their wings out and glide like most birds, but rather flap several times and then fold their wings and drop like tiny feathered bombs before flapping again, making them look like stones skipping across an invisible pond.\n\nBasically they're [[fucking adorable]].