The Birds
Ryan Seagrist
It began simply enough—I wanted to feed the birds in my backyard.
There was no logic behind it—no pressing concern, no mandate. I didn’t consult with the neighborhood HOA, nor did I notify the county planning department. I merely felt as if it would be a nice thing to do, to give the birds something to eat. Perhaps I believed they deserved it, or perhaps I thought I did. I had some spare plywood in the garage, remnants from when I used to work construction, before the injury. I fashioned a feeder. It was sturdy and symmetrical. It hung well, balanced.
I suspended it from the thick branch of an oak tree in my backyard using a length of fishing line. The fishing line was the only string I could find, but it seemed right—thin, nearly invisible, the sort of thing that would allow the birds to imagine that the food was simply appearing there by some kind of divine grace, floating in the air like magic. I waited, but nothing came at first.
Then I saw them, sparrows mostly. A few cardinals. Some bluebirds, although I never saw more than one at a time. I watched from the screened porch each morning. I ate toast. I drank black coffee. I played the same station on the radio—classic rock and sixties hits. The birds seemed to respond to the music, hopping in rhythm, cocking their heads as if they were listening. It gave me something to interpret, and interpretation, I’ve found, is the closest thing we have to living. To truth.
I imagined they were grateful, understanding that the seeds came from me. I refilled the feeder when they emptied it, careful not to let it remain barren for long. I was proud of this consistency, the rhythm of it all.
Then I saw them. The Squirrels.
They discovered the feeder by accident or by some noiseless signal passed in the night. Their chirps. They descended the line like acrobats—fluid, graceful. Unlike the birds, they took everything. No singing. No gratitude. Just theft. Their mouths bulged grotesquely with the stolen seed. They fled to unseen burrows and returned within minutes, hungry for more.
I observed all this and tried not to interfere, to let nature take its course.
I told myself these were creatures of instinct. That they could not help it. That their hoarding was a reflex—preparations for a winter that would never arrive in Florida. But deep inside me, something soured. I missed the birds. I hadn’t built the feeder for the squirrels, though, in nature, they had just as much right to the seeds as did the birds. Nature was a competition without end.
But there was nothing left to watch. The squirrels emptied the feeder with such efficiency that the birds gave up, frightened by both the competition and the vacuum. As soon as the seed was exhausted, the squirrels moved on to other yards. The mornings became colorless. The coffee turned bitter. My toast, dry and burnt.
I tried WD-40. The logic was primitive—make the line slippery, deny them access. But it turned into a farce. They slid gleefully down the greased line like dancers in some depraved circus, performed flips onto the feeder, and leapt off when finished. It was almost beautiful. I hated them for it.
I was not deterred. I attempted innovation. I remembered a Frisbee from years ago—company logo, a memory of employment, now irrelevant. I fashioned it into a baffle above the feeder using duct tape. It worked. Briefly. The squirrels circled below like disoriented soldiers. The birds returned. For two mornings, I felt at peace.
But squirrels are problem-solvers. Clever. They have intelligence. Birds are beautiful, but they are stupid things. Maybe this was why I loved them. One squirrel discovered how to grip the Frisbee’s edge and to hurl himself downward, upside-down, onto the feeder like a gymnast. The others followed suit. I watched them teach one another how to perform the trick. They had a system. A curriculum. Lessons.
I stood at the window, powerless, like a God stripped of omnipotence.
But I thought I was up to the challenge. I would not be beaten by rodents. I bought hot seeds—laced with capsaicin, which I was assured would repel squirrels but would not affect birds. But science failed me. The squirrels spit out the seeds and shrieked, vanishing towards other yards. But the birds—my birds—did not eat either. They flew down, examined the offering, then flew away in silence.
The feeder hung untouched.
I returned the bag to Home Depot and received a refund. They did not work, I told them. I went back home, a beaten man. The feeder swung gently in the wind, like a lantern on a windy night. I filled it again with the regular seed. The cycle resumed. Squirrels thrived. The birds returned, then fled.
I had tried everything, and so I was turned to the side of violence.
I remembered an old rusty BB gun I had in my garage. It was my son’s, from when he was a child. It still rattled with ammunition, the tiny brass pellets. I didn’t believe they would harm anything, not really. I simply wanted to scare the squirrels away. To prove a point.
I sat in the bushes like a sniper in war. I took aim. The first shot struck one cleanly through the head. The squirrel collapsed without ceremony. The others ran as I approached its body. There was a hole. A small, decisive hole. The feeder hung above its corpse, indifferent to the events of the world.
I buried the squirrel in a flower bed and threw the gun in the trash. I had crossed some invisible line. The situation had spiraled out of hand and had ventured into the realm of obsession. I had meant only to feed birds, but now I had killed a squirrel. A murderer.
I took down the feeder the next morning and threw it in the bin next to the BB gun. The birds returned briefly, circled the empty space, looking for the feeder and the seeds, then disappeared back into the trees when they realized it was gone.
Now, I drink my coffee alone. I play the radio as I always did. The music sounds thinner, and I eat, though without enjoyment. I leave for work at the same time every day. The tree is still there. The leaves rustle in the wind. I can hear the squirrels, but I do not look out the window.
There birds come and go as they please. I hear only the noise of the squirrels all around me, plotting, jumping from branch to branch up in the tree, waiting for the perfect moment to exact revenge.
Ryan Seagrist
Ryan Seagrist is a writer and musician living in North Carolina by way of Florida and New York. His work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Cyprus Dome, and Coffin Bell.