entry no. 45, evil animals: birds

The UglyZoo: an uneven gallery of photoshopped chimaeras. Scrolling through them, I rated each collaged animal on a scale of "harmless" to "desperately evil"; I wasn't even aware of what I was doing, but my fight-or-flight response is, despite always prompting flight, strong and swift. The lesson I learned, after averaging my instinctive ratings: beaks are sharp; a bird's eyes display no knowledge of sympathy; simians are silly; and all cats have a borderline personality disorder.

(But, mainly, birds are evil and if they were bigger, would rule us all, patrolling the streets with badges and a self-righteous swagger. They'd have awful, thoughtless tempers, and feel no compunction tearing apart children who are on the streets after curfew. The birds would also, very often, turn against each other, keeping us still in our beds at 4 am, listening to the long score of prehistoric, squacking, mid-air battles.

In the morning, we'd be forced to clean up the loser's remains: a full claw under blinking traffic lights in an empty intersection; clumps of feathers and red skin on doorsteps and playgrounds; feathers scattered like autumn leaves at the fight's epicenter.

Most of our cars would have roofs punctured by the birds' claws. Driving, we often see birds riding on cars, a military presence asserting itself. The birds shit on our cars, too, without compunction, and, often, neighbors, too disheartened to clean the mess, abandon their cars in their driveways. That's usually the first sign of a neighbor's depression, and, after that, we might only see the neighbor stepping back from her bedroom window, replacing her worn, anxious expression with the curtains.)

Posted by nchicha at April 12, 2004 04:17 PM