Birds
When I was a sophomore in high school, my friend Myke and I took it upon ourselves to better the world. Mr. Henderson, Myke’s biology teacher, was offering an extra credit assignment that seemed right up our alley. One of the major teaching tools in our rather backward high school was an antiquated technology called “filmstrip.” Filmstrips, back in their heyday, were used for the storage of important visual information. To help you understand, I will describe how filmstrips were used in Biology.
The teacher would take the filmstrip, which at this point was simply very thin and narrow plastic wrapped around a piece of rounded metal. Filmstrip, you see, is very long. This metal would hook onto a machine called a “film projector.” This machine was the Darwinian element in the world of filmstrip. The film projector, after the teacher had hooked up the metal part, would determine the fitness of the filmstrip. If it was unfit, it would shoot long strands of it at the teacher in anger, or perhaps around the legs of the skinnier and less balanced students. (Film projectors often felt a need to apply their Darwinian principles on the students as well.)
If a filmstrip was found satisfactory and was not ripped, torn, flung or otherwise disposed of by the film projector, the operator would turn on the film projector’s very bright and very hot light. This would often melt the film. If not, then the projector would begin to spool the film from one rounded metal thing to another, passing the film over the light in the process, and thereby projecting an image onto a screen. If the teacher had remembered the screen. Otherwise, it projected onto the chalkboard and suddenly, there was a sea lion with photosynthesis written on its forehead.
There were two types of filmstrip. One had static images that were examined one at a time. The projector proceeded to the next image on command—generally an annoying beeeep. The other type of filmstrip functioned like a movie, with moving pictures and everything. Those are particularly deadly.
Fortunately, Mr. Henderson’s film projector was of the former variety.
Given that the technology was outdated even back when I was fifteen, it is no surprise to hear that the accompanying sounds to the filmstrip (contained on a device called a “cassette tape”) were painfully uncool. This brings us to the extra credit assignment. Mr. Henderson offered extra credit to any student who would rerecord the soundtrack to any filmstrip, making it a little more “hip”, a little more “with it” for the 90s teenager.
Myke loved the idea. He recruited me for his new sound studio and we picked up the script to “Birds” from Mr. Henderson one day as we ate lunch in his classroom. (We often hung out there, and not just for the caged tarantulas.)
The primary rule was that it had to be the same script word-for-word-wise, but that the rest was ours for the sprucing up. What Myke and I immediately knew was that the new soundtrack would require three things: Rock and Roll, Sound Effects and a replacement for that annoying beeeep between frames. Maybe a quack.
Sadly, we never did complete the task. We came up with a great number for the title screen (bubiddy dah bee dah, dubiddy dah bee dah, dubiddy dah bee dah, DAH, BIRDS!), but we never did get beyond that. (We did however, record with our friend Beau, a version of Poe’s “The Raven” wherein the raven is the cops and Nevermore is an escaped convict.) I suffer when I consider the good we could have bestowed on future generations of students, but we did not. No, we had to go be artistic rather than pragmatic and educational. Oh, the shame!
But although we never did educate the masses, I still love birds—long have. Even though our family owned chickens at one time. Chickens are kind of dumb, you see. But I did like Skunk, who laid green eggs. Anyone who lays green eggs is okay in my book.
When I was a kid, I had a taped-together, plastic, green box of animal cards. Each card boasted a picture on front with some iconography regarding where the animal lives and what sort of thing it is (bird, arachnid, goat), and a brief talkabout on the back. Many of my favorites were birds. I remember one that was startlingly beautiful, iridescent of so many colors, and with a wacky name like zipper, or something. I dug the macaroni penguins, with the yellow bolts flying off their heads; and secretary birds ate snakes. [ills]
I would take the cards and alphabetize them. Then the next night I’ld group them by taxonomic icon, breaking them down in this way, finally alphabetizing the member species of those genera with more than one card. (Thus, Canis familiaris came before Canis lupus, for instance.) I was a rather quiet child.
Around town, I could identify robins and mountain bluebirds, if nothing else. But that wasn’t bad—the mountain bluebird is, after all, the state bird of Idaho. [ill of mountain bluebird—perhaps with an extra caption: I’m no Audubon] I still feel ripped off because I wasn’t home when an apparently tame crow dropped by to visit my family one afternoon in the eighties.
Speaking of crows, I love ravens even more. Their beautiful, shimmery feathers, their black beaks and their witty conversation. Years after childhood, I sat in a hospital waiting room waiting for my father, who was working there. I read an excellent article in the Smithsonian about biologist Bernd Heinrich concerning ravens. He’s even worked out an IQ test for them. He puts a piece of meat on a string and hangs it from a branch and times how long it takes the bird to figure out what to do. Crows who fly by peck at the string confusedly for a while, then fly off depressed. A raven will eventually figure out that he needs to pull the string up a little at a time, holding each measure with his foot until he can reach the meat. (Incidentally, I saw a macaw do this with a peanut at California’s Bonfante Gardens, but I suspect it was trained.) This makes me wonder: is Aesop’s tale about the raven that put rocks in the pitcher until he could get a drink based on truth? And thus, did a raven discover buoyancy before Archimedes?
Let’s just take a brief and exciting look at two of my favorite birds:
Steller’s jay—like a blue jay only mostly gray and only partially blue! They lived in Central California with me and seem to hang out and Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks! In some ways, I like them more than blue jays—maybe blue jays are just to pretty for me!
Crazy swifts—I actually don’t know what their name is, but I believe they are swifts, and I believe they are crazy! They live in Chinhae, South Korea in the spring! I loved these birds! They are so erratic as they fly around eating bugs! They are screaming right at you, just shy of Mach 1, when suddenly, only six inches away from your nostrils, vrrrr! they whir off at a 95° angle! Walking to and from our apartment was a daily adrenaline rush! I imagine the swifts lived next to us because our apartment was right up against the docks where the fisherman dealt with the day’s catch, and thus there were lots of flying bugs for them to eat!
One bird I always loved without ever having seen one, is the cardinal. On basis of mascot alone, I made St. Louis my third favorite baseball team. (Pittsburgh being my inherited first, and the Mets being second because, um, because of their colors, I guess.)
Nauvoo was the first to finally introduce me to this red bird—which is the state bird of practically every state it lives in.1 It was quite a thrill, seeing my first cardinal. And he was followed by more cardinals, and other pretty birds that would come and hang out in the trees about the JSA’s courtyard. Even quail. But quail I’ll always associate with BYU.
Quail overrun BYU campus, but I’ll wager that the majority of students never even see one. Quail are so exceedingly nervous you see. The motto of every quail family is “RUN!”, and they are all excellent at living by it. I like quail. They’re funny when they run. Lynsey says they’re the cutest birds. I won’t argue that.
[ill]
Another great member of Nauvoo’s avian population is the duck. As we would drive down the Mississippi on our way to Keokuk for one errand or another, whole flocks of ducks would take flight before us. I like ducks; they try harder than other birds. Ducks have to flap and flap and still it seems like their feet will never clear the water! Go on ducks! You can do it!
This last spring, Lynsey and I observed a local duck couple. The lady duck was a mallard and her husband was a big, white, farm duck. When all the other duck couples had ducklings and not them, we figured the poor couple was unable to reproduce. But finally they had their own little entourage wobbling about and swimming behind momma as quick as their miniature webbings could manage. Their ducklings looked just like all the mallard-and-mallard couples’ kids, but not so now that they’ve grown up. Half are a lovely flat grey with white breasts, and the other half black with white. They’re quite the family. And poor Mom’s half the size of her progeny. But she’s a good mom. And all the kids still follow her around.
[ill]
Certain birds from my life were sadly lacking in Nauvoo. No ostriches, for example. My hometown of Tehachapi’s loaded with ostrich ranches. And none of those Scarlet Snarling Hippo Tearers either.
But even birds that are decidedly part of the Illinois scene were lacking from my Nauvoo experience. I suppose that is mostly due to my lack of skills as an ornithologist, but I rather wish I had seen (and recognized) a cuckoo. One bird I wish I could have seen, neither of us ever will. At least not living. Consider this text, from a book by Naturalis, Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum of Leiden (Swift as a Shadow, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999):
With feathers that flickered green or purple according to the light, the passenger pigeon had a long, slender tail, pointed wings, and a graceful, powerful body. In the 1830s, the American ornithologist John James Audubon wrote that as flocks of the birds passed swiftly overhead, “the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse” and the noise reminded him of “a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel.” Trees were uprooted under the sheer weight of landing pigeons, and breeding colonies blanketed treetops over as much as forty miles. Yet in the span of a human lifetime the passenger pigeon was gone. During the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of birds were sold to the meat markets of New York City. Hunting for sport was devastating to the species; in one competition the winner had to kill more than 30,000 birds to claim his prize. By the 1890s the pigeons were scarce. As flocks dwindled, chicks became easier prey for predators and birds could not produce enough offspring to replace themselves. On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo.
Terrible, isn’t it? I’m glad that hunters today are much more responsible (I differentiate between “hunters” and “demon poachers who will certainly lead unfortunate afterlives”). Can you imagine? Thirty thousand birds for a stupid prize? It wasn’t worth it. “And wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need” (D&C 49:21). Dr. George Handley, A BYU professor of the humanities (who wasn’t in Nauvoo) has written that being “commanded to ‘subdue’ the earth (Genesis 1:28) . . . never meant to imply ‘unrighteous dominion’ (D&C 121:39).”2
It would be something, don’t you think, to see such a flock of birds flying through the air? I bet if the umbrella industry was organized at the time, they would have screamed for passenger pigeon conservation!
On the other hand, imagine a 1963 movie audience coming out of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds only to discover that while they were in the movie, forty miles of pigeons had settled on the town. Yikes!
I guess the only thing this essay is lacking before it can end is a dramatic tale of the Bird Who Could. You know, the bird that rescued a baby from quicksand or devoured a field of crickets or plowed through triple-paned glass in the middle of American History. You know, a real exciting story. But nothing like that happened while I was in Nauvoo. So I’m going to make one up.
The time: 2 am. The date: August 10, 1842. The situation: a secret band of evil men has decided to assassinate the prophet.
You’ve never heard of these men, you say. How could I have never heard this story, you ask. Because, I answer, no man repelled these evil men. No, this is the story of the Bird Who Could.
[ill-dramatic marginalia—or perhaps a chicken in a superman suit]
The night was unusually dark for August—even for 2 am. The three heat-drenched men who crawled up the murky embankment of the Mississippi did not seem to mind the darkness. They looked to be naturally dirty men, men who, even under a glaring noonday sun would have blackened pores, rotted teeth and indeterminate skin color. Based on their mutterings to each other, their souls were no cleaner.
The men had been drinking in Quincy the last three days, boasting of evil planned and performed, and had been rewarded with the rejection of the community. Since the preceding morning they had been plodding up the river, toting liquor, dried beef and, most pridefully, intricately carved knives.
The apparent leader, a man now called Jack, had once been a respected jeweler in rowdy New Orleans. His customers snatched up his rings and pendants and decorative knife blades, but dreaded talking politics or religion. The man was famed for his anarchic opinions regarding government—he often threatened the president when drunk and declared the mayor a cloven-foot demon—and his ideas of religion would alarm even the most hellbent, body-snatching, broken-toothed Caliban of the bayou.
The jeweler disappeared one unseasonably cold April morning, leaving behind two bodies, and taking with him gold, silver and jewels belonging to half the town’s upper crust. He reappeared in St. Louis about a year later, now going by the name Jack. Jack was never able to gain a reputation like he had had in New Orleans. Nor did he desire to spend time with pearls or emeralds any more. He became famous for his depictions of hell and torture on the serrated blades he hawked in bars and outlying areas.
When stories of Mormons started circulating in St Louis, Jack knew he had found his nemesis. He crafted a dozen blades with the phrase “Mormon Slayer” down the side, and made leather-wrapped handles he claimed were Mormon skin. While the St Louis newspapers and civilized folk cried out against their state’s treatment of the Mormons in the west, Jack tried to round up a small group “to take back our wilderness and get some gold and women.”
The next several years he bummed around various backwaters, slowly moving upriver, causing trouble and preaching the pleasures of hell to willing and unwilling audiences. He picked up a dirty, young corner-sitter called Pilbow in a dumpy town named Warsaw. Pilbow took to following Jack around, reduced to the fulfilling of Jack’s desires, Jack’s purposes, Jack’s will.
Jack and Pilbow’s ungodly language and vile threats earned them the title of “Baby-Drownders” from the populace. First hatefully, from the women, but the title was adopted by the more deranged, and heightened to “Mormon Baby-Drownders,” in recognition, if not respect, of Jack’s new slogan, Nits and lice, nits and lice.
While even the most hateful anti-Mormons in the area normally avoided the twosome, Crutch was attracted to them. Crutch had been orphaned as a child, and as an adult, had nailed his parent’s undug skulls to a tree outside his burning grandmother’s home. No one in Illinois knew that story, but there was a twinge of madness in his eyes that led even the famed outlaw John “The Reaper” Portersen to say of him, “The bastard’s a child of the devil, he is.”
Crutch took up with Jack and Pilbow after a knife fight. Jack’s tempered steel with the gold inlay representing a disemboweled apostle chipped Crutch’s blade several times before finally snapping it. After another minute, Jack stepped back to watch his foe bleed to death. When realized he wasn’t going to, their respect became mutual. Crutch took up with Jack once he started walking again, and the three of them became known as Satan’s Sons around the area.
In the backcountry, they were feared for their thefts and assaults and rapes. In the city, if they weren’t immediately forced out by a quickly organized group of citizens before they could cause trouble (and it was difficult to find men bold enough to stand up to the Sons), they were tailed by the police for their entire stay. No one wanted to initiate a confrontation with the Sons though, and so unless they did something unusually illegal, they were left alone.
Their time in Quincy was spent in front of a train of bottles, and when they finally left, only the bar’s owners could possibly have missed them. It was a matter of pride, you see, that Jack always paid his bar bills. Exactly where he got the money, people where afraid to guess and unwilling to ask.
Walking up the Mississippi that dark August night was the beginning of a night of destiny for them, Jack muttered to himself over and over. Up until this night, Jack had been afraid to actually move on Nauvoo itself, what with its famous militia and well-trained police. But three days of solid drinking had finally steeled him, and now he was bent with an almost suicidal resolve to kill the prophet. The other two, as the fire died down, fixed their resolve again with a swallow or two more of whiskey.
Jack had no clear idea of where the prophet lived. Crutch had seen him once, but all they really had to go on was a drunk patent medicine man who claimed he’d been to Smith’s house on the river. Jack figured the most immorally fancy house by the river would have to do. He would kill everyone in it, and that, would be that.
He was brandishing two of his favorite knives. The one is his left hand had a self-portrait on one side and flying demons on the other. He referred to it as his Soul Knife. In his fighting hand he held his latest creation, a random pattern of human bones Crutch and Pilbow had dug up for him one night. For this knife, Jack was unusually worried about having an accurate engraving. He called it the Jo Smith Now Knife. And by the look of that bend in the river, he realized, it was just about Jo Smith Now.
He growled at Pilbow for some whiskey and spit out his chaw. He jabbed a finger at Crutch. Crutch, having lived in the area longest and having been in Commerce a few times before the Mormons showed up, knew more about the land than either Jack or Pilbow did. Jack demanded to know if they would get to old Jo Smith faster if they stayed on the river or if they moved inland to cut across the bend.
Crutch wasn’t sure. If they stayed on the river they’ld definitely find town, but he’d heard that most of town was on a hill, and that, likely as not, was it.
It was difficult to tell just where river, land and sky began or ended, but all three of them sensed that that was Nauvoo—just over there.
In the end, Jack decided to stick with the river. That decision made, they moved forward, Pilbow impetuously taking the lead. From under his second step shot a horrible cracking and squashing. In the desperately humid air, the stench of blood assaulted them. Suddenly, a series of raspy chitters poured from among Pilbow’s feet, like the sound of a living avalanche. Suddenly, out of the deep, murky air, the sound of footsteps. Pilbow turned to discover he was face to face with a red and snaggle-eyed beast, mud and frog guts dripping from its beak. Pilbow stumbled backwards, tripping over a mound of mud. He screamed. Although the monstrous bird had not moved since its appearance, its young clambered out of the nest and started ripping up Pilbow’s pants with their small beaks—two with egg teeth still attached.
Pilbow struggled to get his legs out of the Tearer’s nest— He had been standing in its nest! That sudden realization forced all remaining sensibility from him and he started kicking and clawing, screaming at his small attackers. That was when the mother bird came down on him. Her straggly grey feathers whooshed as she leapt, and her yellow, stalky legs fell upon his face.
Startled out of their shock by Pilbow’s scream, Jack and Crutch crouched down, ready to attack. They had heard of the red-eyed horror of the swamps before, but neither had ever seen one. Some said slave-masters brought them over from Africa to guard their plantations. Others said Indians sent the birds over the river, after being driven out of their homelands, as a revenge on the white man. Others said it was the devil himself, building nests for his new demons along the shores of the Mississippi. But all agreed it was death to meet one. They could, it was said, outrun a horse.
Jack and Crutch knew that now, with her head down, was their best chance to take the bird. They ran at her. Crutch took her lags, wrapping himself around them and Jack slashed at her neck with both knives. It didn’t take long. The bird dead at their feet, Jack and Crutch laughed and joked about cooking the bird up for a red-eye and Pilbow sandwich. They paused only long enough to dump Pilbow’s body in the river before they started looking for the chicks.
Whether Scarlet Snarling Hippo Tearers were named after a real or imagined history of killing giant, African mammals, one thing is sure: They are no more. No sighting has been reported in over 150 years. The once feared sighting of a Tearer nest is now a forgotten bit of zoological lore. Tearers built nests in areas with a high clay content in the soil. They would swallow the mud or dirt, then bring it back up a few hours later to build their nests with. The high acid content this provided discouraged insects and other parasites from finding Tearer young. One pair of birds would lay about ten eggs, and raise as many as five Tearers over a period of two years. Then the same two birds would begin again. The same two birds. Scarlet Snarling Hippo Tearers mate for life.
If he was not already on his way, no doubt the sounds of Jack and Crutch laughing and joking as they dismembered his wife hurried the male Tearer back to his nest. He too had been hunting frogs, and bits flew everywhere when he lunged out of the bushes and kicked Jack in the stomach, collapsing him to the ground and spilling his intestines. Crutch threw his knife and turned to dive into the river when the Tearer bit down on his shoulder and pulled him to the ground.
The Tearer started to divide the two demon-men for his children, but then he stopped. Perhaps it was the reek of alcohol, but he kicked the carcasses away. Silent for a moment, eyes wide and head cocked, he suddenly sprinted to a shallow spot and returned with an otter. As the remaining chicks ate, he removed the chick Pilbow had stepped on from the nest and sat it, and the two others who had been killed, in a nearby hollow. With his foot, he kicked the dirt above the hollow, collapsing some of it upon his lost children. After a pause, he turned slowly away from the makeshift grave and returned to his wife, his mate, his life companion. He lay down beside her cruelly damaged body, set his head beside hers, and closed his eyes.
[ill of a nightscape]
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Thanks for revisiting Nauvoo with me. I would love to hear your thoughts.