Bluebirds
Illustrated by Antone Harden
In memory of Anthony Harden
One of the birds told another bird their flock should fly over the farm and land in the lights on the baseball field. The day was a blue one with messy sunlight all over the cities, and in the lights of the baseball field there were abandoned nests. The one bird went to the nest and made the nest cozy. Then the bird nestled into the nest and went to sleep. All of the birds went to sleep and a few of the birds laid eggs in the months that came.
Suddenly, the baseball field stopped being occupied. A vandal had poked holes in the septic tanks below the field so the grass began to smell stinky. The robot investigators were able to speak bird and they went up to the lights with a microphone and began to question the birds who had never seen any vandals but only wanted to raise their chicks in peace. So, the investigation proceeded. Weeks later, the baseball field reopened and let in thousands of people who went into the stadium and looked left and right over their shoulders, jawing things to the people they walked with into the stadium and over to their bleachers. When winter neared, the bluebirds flew south, and they soon ended up in the sky above the Carolinas.
The little birds born in the spring were just strong enough to fly to North Carolina. The other birds kept them on task, chirping all the time as the flock stopped and slept in abandoned car frames, bushes, hedges, or pieces of construction equipment. The birds enjoyed their winter very much. They sat on wires. They watched over beaches where all the humans laid and played with multicolored beach balls, and the birds flew over the ocean sometimes, using tact to avoid sea spray. They had used tact their whole migration south! On clear nights, the bluebirds would hop around Styrofoam cups and peck at the bits of grain dropped on the grounds of amusement parks. The birds would fly around rides like the merry-go-round, swinging Viking ship, and Ferris-wheel. They would chirp and sing above the clattering of the shoes. The young bluebirds were cheery.
When the weather in the south began to warm, the flock flew up north to the forest. The bluebirds made fresh nests with the fallen twigs uncovered by the sun that had melted the snow, and the bluebirds set up humble dwellings in the trees. In the forest, there was a wonderful river. When sunlight reached through the trees and touched the river, the river water looked like shimmering diamonds and the birds enjoyed hunting for worms and grubs on the riverbanks. At night, the bluebirds were wary of the bats. However, some older ones flew out in the moonlight when they wanted to expand their mystery. Their tiny bird hearts would beat quickly in their bosoms as the insects chirped until the bluebirds got tired and returned to their flock, shutting their eyes to match the darkness in heaven. From these occasional nighttime explorations, the old, daring bluebirds would then feel nearly as cool when they saw a bluejay sitting on a branch nearby.
One day, an apothecary went by the river to look for a particular type of healing plant. Some said the bluebirds always led one to this kind of plant so the apothecary was excited when he saw the bluebirds in the treetops, and as soon as several bluebirds flew away from the river and into the forest, the apothecary did his best to follow them below, but it was very difficult for the man to look for the plant while keeping an eye on where the birds might fly next. After relocating with the birds a few more times, the apothecary found what he needed: an Indian pipe plant, which is also called a “ghost plant.” The Indian pipe plant was by a fallen birch tree. Last winter’s snow had weighed the birch tree down then cracked it. The apothecary went into the town and made an elixir that was supposed to remedy bad dreams. However, years later, when the apothecary was explaining to a knowledgeable elder that the ghost plant was known to be associated with bluebirds, the elder claimed this was nonsense. No matter how many people the apothecary asked afterward, he could not find anyone who had heard about this natural connection that led him to the Indian pipe plant. He went to three libraries and there was no record of the phenomenon. The internet searches always turned his words around. They showed him only popular results or ones that made money. So the apothecary could find no source for the legend. He went back into the forest one day to try and find the bluebirds. But by then it was fall. The bluebirds were in the air and they made it all the way to South Carolina.
It was very nice on the beaches. The bluebirds made nests in a golf course without creating hazards or uncouth messes for golfers. The bluebirds had a great winter. Alas, part of the flock died but that was natural. Left on hot pavement, dead birds laid with their tiny feet up in the air, stiff, and the rest of the flock did not dwell on the dead as it was clear their little bird souls were elsewhere; they could not afford to keep yoyoing north and south for anymore years.
Meanwhile, in the forest up north, the deer were very careful as they always are, but they realized there were less people in the forest. There was a great pandemic in the cities and in the countryside and people stayed in their forts, towers, compounds, and mansions on the Internet. The snow was like crystals under the sun. It was very cold, but the squirrels had brief moments of transcendence in the mornings as they puffed their breaths out into the cold air and they could see their breath before their eyes. The squirrels had beady eyes and bushy tails. The acorns they gathered before the first snow sustained them well, and some of the squirrels went to live in the roofs of the human houses because they were daring, even though the older squirrels told them this was unnecessarily dangerous and there was plenty of room in logs and in the holes in the trees.
The bluebirds flew up north again and this season many of them became pregnant. Soon mothers stood guard of their eggs in the nests so the grackles did not come and eat the eggs like the monsters they seem to be to other birds. The ravens acted as if they were on the side of the grackles, but they would always tip off the bluebirds with loud croaks if any grackles below were plotting on the eggs in their high, neat nests. There was a beautiful rain one day that summer. As the rain patted the pointed leaves of nearby plants, a baby bird pushed through its egg and came into the world with its eyes closed. It was crying and without feathers. The bluebirds typically did not name each other, but a zephyr stopped by the nest and named this baby bird ‘Chirp Rain.’ It was a great combination of things and all of the onion creatures came up that night and danced very much before retreating to the magical kerosene lamp buried under the ground. The bluebirds had doubled in numbers over the last five years. Many of them had left one another and moved to different parts of the forest or different forests all together. But once in a while they would see old friends as they summered south in the air and that was wonderful even if for an instant and from a distance. The ocean waves in Florida were riding up the shore. The air was the hottest many blue birds experienced, but they found abandoned nests, and they looked over the grasslands at the herons and befriended the alligators, sitting on the alligator’s brows as the alligators held their heads up out of the waters.
Before their spring migration, there was plenty of unused fishing bait to eat. The bluebirds picked at the discarded McDonald’s french fry holders. There was a magnificent hurricane as they were flying up north. One of the birds had a bad dream that a whole house flew by them in a screen of rain as they rested in a tree. Another bird had the same unsettling dream. ‘Trees are so strong,’ they reflected, and then the two dreaming birds looked at one another and knowing they had not named each other both had an ingenious idea to give names to all the trees as they flew up north, but this seemed to be less important by the time they found the supply of bread fallen out of a basket on the roadside. The two birds gave up on those naming ambitions and ate their fill and slept in a bulldozer.
In the forest that summer, there were so many bluebirds. The apothecary had made a camp and was determined to study the flight patterns of bluebirds and how they connected to Indian pipe plants, but he soon realized the blue birds could be found near all sorts of plants, next he got a leech on his skin, next his great aunt died. The apothecary stopped trying to investigate that old legend. The winter that year had much snow. It was wonderful as the snow had been so little in the past years because all the humans had stressed out their brachial structures, minds, and fuels. There was some conspiring in the clouds, ocean, and yellow grass, then there was a blizzard in early December that opened a door for a whole heap of snow that fell from heaven onto the land over the course of a couple weeks. Christmas really felt like Christmas again to many people. Cardinals were on the wrapping paper and in the trees. People called Cardinals were on the television for the Vatican mass. Soon after Jesus’ birthday, something contemporary and important happened in a far-off foreign place. People sang “Noel, Noel!”
The bluebirds found there were many fallen trees when they returned to the forest that year. Water in the creeks, streams, and rivers seemed to be extra loud and they could tell because they found it harder to hear each other when they were singing and chirping, but the bluebirds were not angry with the water. They only found this change interesting, and they were light like air pockets with feathers as the sun was shining. The sun shined down over the forest like a grand ruler, casting golden darts everywhere. Bluebirds had an exceptionally good time that summer as the water was very loud and there was as much rainfall as there was snow in the winter. The forest was lush. The hydrangea bushes were gorgeous. Birds built nests in comparatively obtuse angles that summer. Perhaps they built nests in obtuse angles so they did not make containers for the excess rainfall, trickling down the trees.
No one came to gather the Indian pipe plants so the ghost plants hung their bells. Occasionally, a few rowdy teenagers swung flashlights through the trees. There was a great thunderstorm one day. It was the last major rainstorm before the cold weather started to move in again. The bluebirds migrated south to the Carolinas and to Florida as well. Waves crushed the coastline. Bits of the dry ground were pulled into the ocean. A few young bluebirds found a rubber tire on a beach, but at a closer look, they saw it was a rubber tire pinning down a sea turtle.
“The ocean will come and get me,” the turtle said. “I just have to wait here.”
The bluebirds went to the flock and were excited to share what they had seen at the beach. However, before they could talk about the sea turtle under the tire, the flock was spread out in a very nice yard decorated with bird-feeders and birdbaths. The other birds did not care to hear about the turtle under a tire. They chirped and they sang, so the young bluebirds could chirp and sing along.