Phoenix On A Sidewalk

No, this isn't another one of those Dead Bird (#1, #2, #3, #4) posts.  I just happened to spot this stain on the sidewalk

and knew instantly what I had to do with it.  I brought it home, did some simple basic edits -- and it was reborn in dramatic fashion as the fabled Phoenix, the immortal bird that, having reached the end of a five hundred-year cycle (sources may differ on this point), immolates itself in a pyre and then is reborn from the ashes, young and renewed, as the next generation of itself.

What The Cat Left Behind

At least, I assume a cat was responsible.  I have seen stray cats -- or perhaps just indoor cats on outdoor patrol -- roaming the neighborhood on numerous occasions, but never a stray dog (or weasels or racoons or any other kind of feral creatures, for that matter).

The sight reminded me of another incident from a couple of weeks ago -- a roadkill pigeon.  But how does a bird get run over by a car?  Was it lying helpless on the road because it was sick or dying, or perhaps already dead?  I'm reproducing those images here also, albeit shrunk down, due to their gruesome nature (feel free to expand them, though).

Related posts:  I Guess "Lucky" Really Isn't The Word...                                 Errant Wing                                                                               Dead Bird                                                                                 Dead Hummingbird

Pigeons In The Cold

HOW I KILLED TWO PIGEONS

I've sometimes wondered where all the pigeons in the parks and plazas go at night.  During the day, there they are, strutting around in their (seeming) thousands, competing for sidewalk space with busy humans, crapping everywhere, then once darkness comes they are -- whoosh! -- gone.  Where do they disappear to?

Once I killed a pigeon by accident -- I was driving up a freeway ramp, accelerating to join the traffic flow, when suddenly this pigeon shot up out of nowhere, tried to fly across in front of my pickup and crashed into the windshield.  I did not bother stopping to check.

And I've killed another one -- deliberately.  At the time I was living in an upper-floor apartment with a balcony.  A small flock of pigeons frequented the roof of a house across the lane, and at one point two of their members -- presumably a mating pair -- decided to fly over and enfeoff my balcony as their private domain.  Every time I saw them cooing around, tramping on the furniture and ducking in and out around all the items that had accumulated there over time, I would get annoyed and chase them away, but they stubbornly kept coming back again and again.  I don't like my private space invaded -- not by people, not by bugs, and not by birds -- and it was as if they were determined to pester me day after day.

Finally, one day I just couldn't take it any more and went after them with a "reach extender" -- you know, one of those devices with a handle and trigger at one end of a shaft and a claw at the other end --

(courtesy of the internet)

because I'd read that pigeons are filthy, infested with external parasites, even that they are "rats on the wing", and didn't want to touch them.  One of them managed to fly off immediately, but the other one was trapped among the large miscellany of objects on the balcony and although I had a time of it, I finally succeeded in grabbing it around its chest.  I held it upside down, then smashed it headfirst onto the parapet, presumably breaking its neck, or skull, or both.  Its mate never came back after that.

Anyhow, as to where pigeons go at night, I guess they "take shelter" like this:

Except, of course, it's no shelter at all.  When I saw them like this in an alley in the late afternoon, exposed to the freezing wind and looking miserably subdued and gloomy, I actually felt sorry for them.

Select related posts:  I Guess "Lucky" Really Isn't...

                                   Errant Wing

                                   Dead Bird

I Guess "Lucky" Really Isn't The Word To Use here...

"Serendipitous", maybe?  That doesn't seem quite appropriate either, but plain old "coincidence" doesn't seem to do the incident justice, somehow.  A "meaningful coincidence"?  Maybe, but I don't really know what meaning to ascribe to it.

Anyway, a few hours earlier I set out on a walk, like I do every day.  As I was passing by this grocery store I heard a dull thud;  I turned to look, and there was what might have been a crumpled hat (I was wearing very dark sunglasses and it tends to filter out details to some degree).  Thinking it might have been dropped by a construction worker working high up, I went and looked closer -- and realized it was a dove.

It was still alive, just barely.  I immediately took out my phone camera, and as I clicked away it closed its eyes (well, its nictitating membranes) and stopped moving -- I had just witnessed the death of the creature.  I should have switched to video mode and recorded its dying moment, I could have kicked myself.

The shop proprietor saw me shooting away, became curious and came out.  I told him the bird had just fallen a moment before.  Then a woman came along, seemed curious and gingerly turned the little body over with her foot.

The proprietor went back inside and came back out carrying a plastic bag, grumbling about something so inauspicious happening right in front of his shop.

I had only once before witnessed the actual dying of a creature.  Many years ago I was renting a room in an old building to use as a painting studio.  One day, as I was climbing the stairs I happened to look out the window over the landing, and saw a butterfly flutter down on the roof of the building next door.  Amazingly, it fell onto its side and didn't move, exept for its upper wing being blown about by the breeze.  I had just witnessed the end of its life.  Some years later, in creative writing class I wrote a short story inspired by the incident.  It was titled "A Small Death" and was about a boy recalling the death of a butterfly while attending his older brother's funeral.  Unfortunately, I don't have it any more.

Here are three close-calls from the past, where I narrowly missed witnessing the dying moment of some creature:  

Dead Bird

Another Butterfly Story

Dead Hummingbird

Errant Wing

On the way home from the market today, I came across this torn-off wing on the sidewalk.  Pigeon, by the looks of it, so that means now there is a pigeon somewhere out there that's flying around on just one wing, with the avian equivalent of a limp.

Lame humor aside, I am reminded of the legend of the one-winged bird, bi-ik-jo (kr. 비익조).  The males and females are hatched with just one eye and one wing on opposite sides, so that in order to fly they must pair up as one body and forever depend on each other.  It is often used as a metaphor for a couple deeply, inseparably, in love.

Here are a few illustrations I found:

Related Posts:  Dead Bird;  Errant Snowman

Dead Bird

Today I drove out to Santa Monica beach.  I took a leisurely stroll along the famous Bluffs Trail, and a little while later as I was coming back down the same route I came across a dead bird on the grass.  It wasn't there before, so it must have literally just died there.  Oddly, at the time it seemed pretty much like an ordinary pigeon, but it came out intensely blue in this photograph.  Never seen that in a pigeon before, so maybe it's not a pigeon.

Dead Hummingbird

This afternoon coworker Binh returned from her break and came over to tell me about a dead hummingbird she'd come across. She knew about my interest in hummingbirds and figured I'd want to check it out. It was just lying in the middle of the sidewalk, as if it had just fallen there, she said.

I half-walked, half-ran to the location, anxious to get there before it was carried off by some cat or dog, or worse, stepped on by an inattentive -- or malicious -- human. And to my relief, as I approached the spot I could see it from across the broad, four-lanes-plus-one road, just a tiny dark speck on the sunlit pavement.

It was lying there with its partly-open wings catching the breeze and causing the little body to roll from side to side repeatedly. I took the shots below, then I wrapped it up in some tissue and brought it back to the office. I placed it in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator in the staff lounge (no worries -- this was done only after it was securely wrapped up, taped closed and rolled up in a small tote bag). After work I brought it home and it's now in my refrigerator, to stay there frozen solid, until I figure out what to do with it.



Actually, this is the third dead bird I've brought home. The first was a pigeon I found at USC when I was a student there. It had flown into a glass door and probably broken its neck. I brought it home, cut off the wings, drained and dried them. They were very interesting and mysterious, looking rather like tools of magic from a shaman's kit. Later I traded one wing for a rabbit skin, which I still have.

The second one was also at USC, but it was one of my professors who found it and informed me of it. And I brought that one home, too, and placed it in the refrigerator and sort of forgot about it, until my mother came visiting one day, and as mothers will, decided to clean her son's dust-laden atelier for him. You can guess what happened -- she got a nice little shock when she happened across the little frozen mummy I'd forgotten about. I don't know what I did with that one. Which probably means I disposed of it after the incident.

Below is what I tried to do for the hummingbird's spirit -- help him on his journey to his destination, wherever that may be, by slightly manipulating one of the photos so that it shows him flying on.

EDIT: It occurs to me that this may be the very bird I saw so often in the tree that I came to think of as the 'hummmingbird tree' over the last few years. If that's the case, my hummingbird photos will most likely have come to the end of the series.

EDIT: I have since learned that hummingbirds are protected by law and one cannot keep them, not even dead ones. I guess I could put it back right where I found it, so nature can take its course (although, most likely something 'unnatural' will happen to it there -- like the gardener chucking it in the trash along with mowed grass...).