The Bird

The Bird

Its appearance had been so swift and fleeting that Joe Oswald was beginning to doubt his own eyes, but he was sure – totally sure – he had seen it and had called his father into the room.  As his father entered, Joe was kneeling on the sofa, his face pressed up against the window wall, his small hands leaving greasy prints on the metal.  His father ruffled his blonde hair and joined him at the window.
  “I swear I saw it, Dad,” Joe protested immediately.  “I'm sure of it.  Wait with me a while, it might come back.”
  Joe's father, Adrian, was a teacher over in the next district, working with kids younger than himself, so he was known widely as a kind and patient man.  Adrian would humour Joe for a time, but he would soon have to return to the work which kept him so occupied at home, and this brief moment of contact between father and son would again be over.
  “Honestly, Joe,” his father said.  “Its unlikely you've seen anything out there.  No one's seen anything for exactly one-hundred and twenty-two years.”
  “I did see it, Dad!” Joe ran his hand over the metal of the wall and called up the control panel, zooming in upon the dead, bare tree sitting at the bottom of the communal garden.  “It flew down from over there,” he pointed towards the roof of apartment block opposite theirs, “landed on that tree, then flew off again.”
  His father remained sceptical.  “There are still reports of seeing the birds up in the mountains, but never anything in the City.”
  Joe rested his elbows on the top of the sofa and slumped his chin down onto the palms of his upturned hands, letting out a loud sigh.  He knew his father would deny it all, no one ever believed kids about anything.  No matter how good Joe's marks were at school, his father would always push him to do better.  He wondered if adults ever got excited about anything, other than money and politics.
  His father was playing idly with the visual controls on the window screen, zooming in and scrolling around the picture of the outside world.  It had been weeks since any of their family had actually left the apartment; the indoors was comfortable and calm, whilst the outdoors was dangerous and chaotic.  Yet architects still insisted upon having garden areas in and around all new buildings; it seemed to Joe that it was a cruel joke, to remind people of what they had lost.
  “Why don't the birds come any more, Dad?” he asked quietly.
  Adrian took a deep breath and pondered for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders.  “We let them die,” he said.  “Centuries ago, we had the chance to stop things from getting out of hand – to save the rivers and trees and animals – but we chose not to.  We chose short-term gain over our long-term benefit.”
  “Sounds pretty dumb,” Joe sniffed.
  His father chuckled slightly.  “You're not wrong,” he said.  “The birds are still out there, somewhere.  They're not extinct, they're just... scarce.”
  With a puzzled look on his young face, Joe said, “What does extinct mean?”
  “It means all the animals of that particular species have died,” he explained.  “Plenty of species have gone extinct over the billions of years, like the dinosaurs, but its only comparatively recently that they've started to die out because of humans.”
  “What's a dina... a, um, dimostore...?” Joe stumbled over the word; he'd never heard it before.
  “A dinosaur,” his father chuckled.  “They were big, strong animals that lived millions of years ago.  They were like giant lizards, as big as buildings, with sharp teeth and claws.” He set his hands into claws and roared comically, as Joe laughed with glee.  “They died out because a meteor hit the Earth and kicked up all this dust and ash into the atmosphere.  Pretty much like what we've done ourselves, but that was an an accident.”
  “They sound pretty cool,” Joe said excitedly.  “Did they fight each other and eat each other?”
  “Oh, all the time,” his father said.  “Listen, I've got a book out back somewhere – an actual book, with paper pages and everything – all about them.  You want to learn more?”
  Joe nodded his head with eager joy.  “Yes, yes, yes please, Dad!”
  Adrian scooped up his son in his arms and lifted him onto his shoulders.  Joe made roaring sounds as they left the room and his father laughed.
  They had left the window wall activated, its molecules set to transparency, viewing the stillness of the world outside.
  From up on high, a small, yellow bird swept down onto the bare tree and plucked at the leaf shoots budding from its branches.