Introduction
This collection is a collection of seventy stories, each 280 words. They were inspired by the first picture seen on my Twitter feed on a given day.
64. The Birds
They can be
tiny or gigantic. They can do this thing that we can't. They can stretch out
what passes for arms and fly. Oh why can't we? I pause right now to look out of
my widow and I can see tits, finches and pigeons.
So, that chain store produced a jigsaw puzzle of British birds but the problem was half of them weren't British. What does that mean, being British? Birds don't have passports do they? If something changes on the planet they may change where they go. Can we learn something here?
Do you member that film? By the guy who always made guest appearances? They don't use many real birds, though. They spent thousands of pounds on mechanical ones. That film became even more eerie because it had little music in it - just natural sounds and some calculated silences. The birds fight against humanity, eh? Well, it probably serves us right.
Was it happening again that day, when all of those big birds were lined up on a roof top and kept swooping down on to the road and pecking away at something delicious? As we walked along the road they flew back up to their perch and stared at us.
"Remind you of a film?" asked a passer-by. Yes.
Did you know that many dinosaurs were feathered? And that birds can be traced back to that time? Did they survive by being small enough to live on little after disaster struck?
I look again out of my window. A small tit pecks away at the bird feeder, spilling a few seeds on the ground below for the pigeons. Can't we live side by side?
About the author
Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown.
She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation.
She teaches Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.
http://www.gilljameswriter.com
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