The Birds Aren’t Real

I’ve had the same dream for three weeks:

It’s a bright Spring day in Buffalo, Wyoming and I walk along the Clear Creek Trail. The air is clean and clear, and the trees rustle in a light breeze. The creek shooshes to my left as I head West. I feel calm and at peace in the yellow-green light of spring. The sounds of birds overcome the dull rush of distant cars, then my attention is drawn to a bird on a limb. A robin. I stop and look, admiring the creature. It looks at me, adjusting its focus to a side-eyed tilt, then its eye opens like a camera aperture.

“They’re watching,” I realize, and suddenly I notice another bird, and another; each tilting, each focusing, until I’m surrounded by glassy round apertures staring side-ways. They draw closer and closer until I’m suffocating in birds. I struggle to breath and then I wake. ..

That first night, I attributed the dream to stress: I had moved to a larger city, and I had a major deadline at work. I thought, perhaps, that I missed the simplicity of Wyoming, and that I felt like the eyes of the entire company were on me. This persisted for nearly a week, the same dream the same excuse.

Then I noticed the bird.

I liked walking to work, most often through the park, and on the fifth morning I noticed a pigeon with a V-shaped patch on its chest.

“How neat,” I thought, “what an unusual color,”. It seemed at home in the park, and that weekend I sat at the bench and gave them seeds. The V-Necked pigeon coocood at the bounty, but looked at me often with the head-tilting satisfaction. About ten days after my dream started, my presentation was due. As I left my apartment, I noticed a bird on the telephone wire. It was just an impression, but I could swear it had a V on its chest.

“They’re watching,” I thought, remembering my dream, but shook myself out of it. The dream was getting to me nothing more. If it was stress-induced the presentation should finish that. But I kept seeing the pigeon that day. I was certain it was the same one, how many could possibly have that V? I saw it at the park, as usual, and then on the fence outside of work.

“It’s nerves,” I told myself, “Just nerves for this presentation,”

The meeting room was on the tenth floor, with wide windows on the corner walls. The various senior leaders sat congregated at a long table, and we made our introductions. I set my charts up on the far end and as I looked across the room I saw, on the windowsill, the V-necked bird.

I barely kept my composure through the presentation.

“Who was watching?” I wondered as I left, “Is it just a coincidence?”

The next few days I saw the bird more and more; Outside my apartment, along the street, in the park, in the windows, even the robin in my dream became that horrid V-necked pigeon.

Yesterday, I had enough. Dream or no, that bird had to go. I decided for a simple approach: a trap with whatever I had on hand; I couldn’t let it know what I was plotting. I found an old fishing net, and some bread I had in the fridge.

This morning, I set my plan in motion. I had the net hidden in my coat, and I left the house to the park. I saw the V bird on the wire, and when I got the park, it was on a tree. I sat on a nearby bench and took some bread from my pocket. I spread the bait within net’s reach and beckoned to the bird.

As though deciding ‘it would be more bird like to come eat’ the bird fluttered down. As soon as it landed, in that split second while it’s gaze was on the ground, I sprung and netted it.

It fluttered briefly, but then went deathly calm. I closed the net around it, pinning its wings to its side. Its chest moved frantically as I turned its face to look at me. I looked it in the eyes, and saw the glassy round aperture shifting, focusing, while the other birds turned their glassy gazes on me.

I dropped the bird. Hoping beyond hope it was still just a dream as I ran back to my house.

But I am awake. This is no dream: the birds aren’t real.