Nothing that dies is dead for very long.
I saw a bird die today.
I don't know what kind it was, as I wasn't close enough to tell, but a magpie was torturing it. I first noticed it from it cries, feeble and weak and desperate. With a poke, it was no longer standing on its feet and after a few more of the same; it was kinda lolling on its side, feet in odd angles. I stood there agape, not really doing anything but staring. After all, what on earth was I really going to do? Besides, I didn't really care anyway.
Another poke, then another one. I inch closer to get a better look, cries becoming softer and more feebler, sharp beak digging into seemingly open wounds.
Another cry, more like a squeak then a chirp. A small stick catches my eye slightly ahead of me, as I inch by and slowly pick it up, the magpie backs away from the crime scene and slowly walks away still facing me and the traumatised bird at the same time. I throw the stick but the magpie has already half-fled and I wasn't really aiming to hit the thing anyway.
I glance back to the wounded, its head lolling on the floor, its whimpers heard less frequently, until finally, one last breath, one last movement. One last chirp.
One last cry.
I watched a bird die today.
I was now only a few metres away. I glance at the magpie, a good distance away now, and its staring at me, guiltily I hope. I look back down at the poor creature in front of me and I slow creep closer, hoping, searching, pleading for a small sign of movement. One last baby cheap, a tiny sigh, anything. I continue to inch slowly forward, then stop. I decide I do not wish to see the thing up close and I turn away, not really caring, but hoping I won't cry. The very moment that thought crosses my mind, my Adams apple wobbles and tears streak own my face. I do not care. Nobody is here to watch me anyway. I go back, not intending to turn around, but as soon as I think that, I glance behind me. Nothing. No sign of life whatsoever. All I see is fluff, a wing, stuck in an oddly shaped way, pointing in an odd direction.
I think back to the time I watched a myna bird fall out of a tree and chirp its way for help, my dad, ignoring its pleas. I wanted to pick it up and nurse it back to health. It could become my pet and I could be one of those heroes that I always read about in children's books. I couldn't solve crimes, or sail pirate ships, but I could save this bird.
Obviously not though. '"Come on Alicia", my dad gently disengages me from the floor. "Its too late to do anything" he says, and my mind screams "NO IT ISN'T" while the rest of me fears the worst. A few years later, classmates sit there joking and laughing loudly, a boy I barely know states that if he had a shot gun, he would kill all those god damn myna birds. My head shoots up angrily but more so shocked at the brutal imagery, and I am quick to tell him off for being so heartless. It was by far the most brutal thing I had ever heard of, my innocence and naivety flowing strongly through every vein I possessed.
I've never really forgiven him for that.
I turn around again and there is the bird, standing upright as if nothing had ever happened, looking shell-shocked, but otherwise okay. I could not believe it. Here I was, tears still streaming down my face, over a creature that I must point out, do not actually care for, and it was bloody alive and breathing and seemingly well! I could not believe it!
I watch it walk, then slowly gather its wings and fly. It faces to the directions of the magpie, a good few yards separating them, and they both walk towards each other like cowboys. I half expect them to pull out guns and flip them around.
I wipe the tears of my face, feeling refreshed yet slightly confused but generally complacent all the same. The next time I see the bird, it is following the magpie around. Stupid creature.
This makes me start thinking about a lot of god damn things and my mind wanders freely and continuously, and for some reason lands on this morning's conversation. Alice is right, and oh so teribbly wrong.
Sure, humans care, and they laugh and they cry and that makes us better than animals and we've got languages and morals and civilisation. And it's instinct not to hurt another living thing.
But we've got walls and guns and peace treaties and despite all the god damn good that we know of, we still do the bad. We harm and we kill and we torture, and that is precisely what makes us worse. Because if we are better, then we should know better.
So I sit here waiting, eating a candy cane, and some of the plastic wrapper blows in the wind. Now normally I would pick it up and bin it, but today I just sit there staring at it, hoping that someday, somewhere, a god damn bird chokes on it and dies.