Am I crazy to claim birds talk to me? I sought the sage opinion of an expert on the Vineyard. He spit out a pellet of bone and fur, as owls will do, and observed, “You’re a bird brain, but that can be illuminating. Relax and enjoy the ride”.
“Into madness?” I asked.
“Don’t go all Poe on me,” he said. Then brightening, “It’s fall migration – join some birds heading south and look at the world through their eyes. It’ll be a revelation.”
“What? How?”
“Get an ultralight. You’ll be right up there with them.” I just stared at him.
“Crazy is the new black,” he said.
It sounds nutty, but somehow I liked the sound of that, so the next day I bought a used ultralight and took off with four of his volunteer pals: an osprey, a golden plover, a blue jay, and a coot.
It was a spectacular morning, the sun glinting off the Great Ponds, the beaches pale scarves in the wind. A thousand feet below, though...
And when the Island slipped behind us, there was nothing but open ocean as far as the eye could see. Yikes.
“Scary the first time,” the osprey said. “You’ll get used to it.”
A northerly pushed us from behind. I suddenly felt nauseous, cold, and terrified.
“I need to pee and barf and buy a coat!” I yelled.
“Onward!” they all yelled at the same time. It was a rebuff, a challenge, a cheer. I laughed, and turned back to the ocean. And something big fell away from me. Maybe my day-to-day worries, maybe the tyranny of gravity, or even the fear of death itself. It happened when I saw what the birds see – the curvature of the earth. Achingly beautiful. The owl was right. I relaxed.
When the stars came out we were still going strong, the steady beat of wings a single heartbeat. “Where you guys headed?” I asked.
“Miami,” the jay said. “Panama or bust!” the coot squawked. “Brazil,” the osprey called dreamily.
“Brazil? That’s far!”
“It’s worth it. Four months with no mate screaming at me, no kids to feed. Just fishing and hanging out with the guys.”
“Amazing,” I marveled. Then I remembered the golden plover, tooling along like a machine. “How about you?” I asked.
“A little past Brazil,” he said. “Patagonia.”
I gasped. “Is it possible for a bird to fly from Martha’s Vineyard to the bottom of Argentina?!”
“Actually I start in the Arctic. The whole trip’s about twenty-five thousand.”
“Miles?!”
He nodded. “Two and a half thousand over open sea, too. No food, no water, no place to land. I could use a McDonald’s or two out there.”
I looked at the others. “He’s not kidding,” the coot said.
“Where do you guys get that kind of energy?” I gasped.
“Fat,” the blue jay said. “We live or die by it. Stuff our faces for weeks before taking off. Trouble is, there’s a lot less food and a lot more asphalt every year. I feel a little skinny this time out, actually.” The others said so too. I looked up at the moon and my eyes brimmed. There was a skein of winged bodies twisting across its face – tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of birds – streaming southward along ancient celestial trails. Low on gas.
“How do you know where to go?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Star patterns by night, angle of the sun by day,” the osprey noted. “And earth’s magnetic fields, too.” Of my look of disbelief he added, “I’ve got grains of a mineral, Magnetite, in my forebrain. I read about it in Audubon magazine. Never knew how I did it before that.”
“Your parents show you where to go?” I asked.
“Nope. I just knew.”
“Sounds precarious,” I said.
“I was the only one from my nest to make it the first year. One brother ran into a radio tower, a feral cat got another, and my sister got shot over Cuba.”
“Sorry,” I said, sobered.
He didn’t say anything. He was looking up.
Dark clouds were sweeping over the stars, and the wind was quickening. I heard thunder, and the horizon snapped with lightning. Then my engine quit.
“I gotta land, guys!”
They were already diving for a square of lights below. The only sound was of wings as thousands of songbirds, cranes, birds of the shore and open sea all dove for cover at once. I headed for that lighted square, a huge Walmart parking lot. I spiraled down past a cheese-slicer of high tension wires, missing by inches – seeing other birds strike them and go spinning off with broken wings. At the last second I got things level – skimming onto the parking lot in a huge spray! The asphalt was half flooded, the water waste deep as I came to a stop. I waded to higher ground, shaken. The parking lot was loading up with gulls, but my little flock was nowhere to be seen.
At least the Walmart was open, and there was a handmade sign on the window, CLOSING SALE – EVERYTHING MUST GO!
I was the only customer, and the single clerk seemed surprised to see me. I grabbed a storm jacket, a pair of ski goggles, and a bag of energy bars. Plopped my credit card on the counter. “I didn’t know Walmarts went out of business,” I said. The woman at the register swiped my card and laughed grimly. “Even Walmart can’t fight Mother Nature,” she said. “Half the town’s under water now. Most people have moved inland.” She swiped my card again.
“The storm dumped that much already?”
“Forget the storm, sweetie, it’s the ocean. Been coming up for years. Your card’s expired, by the way.”
I checked the date. “Good until 2016,” I said.
She smiled and pointed at a nearby calendar. It was for 2020. I was speechless. Suddenly she shoved my merchandise over to me, sure I was senile. “They just fired us all with no benefits, so this one’s on the house. Now you get on home.”
And so I left with my stuff.
Outside in the parking lot, coyotes and cats were eating dead birds. One was a blue jay.
“He hit the wire,” a voice said. I turned and there at a gas station nearby was the coot, the osprey, and the golden plover, looking much worse for the wear. “We should leave,” the coot said, flying over and landing on my shoulder for protection.
“I’m out of gas and broke,” I confessed.
I stuffed my hands in the jacket pockets, feeling like a fool. Then I felt something crisp and folded. I pulled out a brand new fifty dollar bill. I looked back at the Walmart. All the lights were out and a car sped away, the woman clerk glimpsed through its window.
“I guess I’ve some money after all,” I said, humbled. I walked over to the pumps.
The grizzled attendant came out, a long gun over his shoulder.
“Help you?”
“I need to fill up that ultralight over there.”
He eyed the plane. “Fifty ain’t gonna fill that thing. Gas’s twenty-five a gallon.”
“Are you serious?!”
“It’s 2030, not 2020 and I’m the only one that’s got some left.” He was eyeing the coot. “How about throwing in your duck?”
“He’s not a duck, he’s a coot,” I said. “And he’s with me. So are those two,” I added, indicating the osprey and the golden plover. “We’re all together.”
He grinned crookedly, blood in his eye.
“You know that old song, “This Land Is Your Land”?
“Yeah…”
“Well, I got my own version,” and he belted out –
“This land is my land, this land ain’t your land, I got a shotgun, and you ain’t got one – !” And with that he shot the coot right off my shoulder.
“That’s dinner – now for breakfast and lunch!” he screamed as I staggered back, half blinded. He turned on the last two birds – but that’s all he did – because the next second the osprey smashed into his face with two fists full of talons and put his lights out. There was a horrible screaming and the osprey had the gun. It rose into the air with it in his claws, oriented muzzle first, just like a big lethal fish, and pulled the trigger. The screaming stopped.
I couldn’t look. Somehow we got the ultralight gassed up and got the hell out of there, the poor coot dying on my lap.
Rising up into the night, the storm gone, the moon back out, the osprey hove up alongside and fixed me with those big gold eyes. “We bird types are heading out to sea. You can’t follow. Fly home and write about what you saw.”
“Nice flying with you,” the golden plover said, and with that they both shot out over the sea, much time to make up and many uncertain miles to go.
I turned back north, and flew right into an office building.
Next thing I remember I was waking in the E.R., raving like a crazy person. They gave me a shot of something and everything went black.
This article is part of an eight-part series Wes Craven produced for Martha's Vineyard Magazine. Click here to read the entire saga of the filmmaker’s adventures with his avian neighbors.
