Extermination

Extermination

As I was driving down the backroads, the birds congregated on the overhead lines. All the electric lines, all the phone lines were dotted with birds. Little block dots as if they were punctuating the space in the air. Or perhaps they were music notes on the score of a heavenly symphony.

I drove further, the birds continued to gather on the black lines.

“What is with the birds?” asked Julie beside me.

“Beats me, I think it’s just a coincidence. I don’t think birds have that much brain power to actually coordinate something like that.”

All down the backroads, birds continued to gather. We thought no more of them.


The birds watched the travelers. Their tiny black globe eyes focused on two beings in a moving target.

“Two coming your way. Pass it down,” said one black bird to the one sitting beside him, a perfect three inches to its right.

“Two coming your way. Pass it down.” That message got sent down the avian message line for miles. It was not altered, it remained the same message from start to finish twelve miles into the forest.

Julie and Mark stopped at the road’s terminus. The giant trees held a myriad of birds, almost as if they were decorations on each limb. But not one chirp or tweet met their ears. Silence reigned.

Then suddenly, as if on cue, the birds took flight. Bobbing and weaving as if one organism, they flew over, around, landed on, then in the car.


Six months later two hikers found a car by a trail. Inside were two skeletons, totally stripped. They searched the car, finding a notebook listing nuisance bird species and future plans to exterminate those species.

W/C 286