DEAD BIRDS

We killed the first one out on the Albertan wheat plains. It tried to jog across the road quite lazily. As the white, blood-spattered momivan barreled down at about 120 kph, the bird did absolutely nothing nothing to get out of the way. Its New York cousins would not even have tried to cross. Only when it was too late did the bird attempt to take off. It was promptly sucked under the minivan. The rear view mirror showed it rolling and bouncing down the road, trailed by a cloud of black feathers and what looked like its own head. The Jetta behind us ran it over, too. My First Roadkill.

The second death came outside of Port Alberni, on the Island of Vancouver. A tiny, sparrowlike creature made the ill-timed decision to fly across the road just as we passed by. The thing scared the shit out of me by appearing about a foot in front of my face, made it three-fourths the width of the car, then appeared to get sucked noiselessly into the airfoil and was swept over the right edge of the windshield.

The cruel splatter of translucent guts on the glass eliminated any fantasy of a happy ending. On with the windshield wipers.