Thursday, July 20, 2006

Life without birds

When I was a kid growing up on the Gulf Coast, I remember what the atmosphere and the weather would be like as a hurricane approached. Cloud cover would envelop the sky, and a strange quiet would settle on us. I supposed the birds and beasts all knew what was coming, and they'd already made their way to shelter in the face of the approaching storm. I never got to experience a direct hit, complete with eye of calm, that I can recall, but those hours just before the storm hit were as calm and quiet as a tomb--and it was like being in a weird dream. The sky was a weird color, and everything glowed in this surreal way, and there were no birds singing. Freaky.

I guess that's what a life without birds would be--like a tomb. I can't imagine going outside in the backyard now and not hearing my birdy friends calling and singing to one another. Sometimes the noise of all the birds is almost deafening; you can feel your eardrums vibrating with the overwhelming high-pitched sounds.

Life without birds would, in a word, suck. Let's hope we never have to live such a life.

1 comment:

ehunter said...

I think about this a lot especially with all the issues that endanger songbirds. It would be a good topic for a sci-fi short story. Can you imagine a world in which a family would go into the woods and the father/mother would explain to the kids how there used to be colorful creatures that flew and sang in these woods, and that Grandfather once saw a red creature with a crest on its head and watched it for an hour, then it flew away and he never saw one ever again? My brother and I used to laugh in the 60's about how what if people actually bought air or water. Didn't mean to go on, but it's a horrid thought to imagine no birds or animals of any kind left.