the least wonderful time of the year
Man. Want to know how cold it was outside this morning?
I was walking along Laurier, when all of a sudden a sparrow just drops dead right in front of me. Like, falls out of the sky, with a hollow thud splat. Dead. Finished.
OK, maybe it wasn’t that cold. But hey, I didn’t know birds just conked out in mid-flight like that. I figured they went and hid away somewhere to shuffle off that mortal feather.
But it was brisk. I insist on shorts and sandals on the bicycle, so the trip downtown this morning was an exercise in coal miner’s toes. Most surprising is that quick burn in the lungs, an area that’s clearly not used to that rush of nine degree air.
I’m kind of thankful for that burn this morning, as if I’d been just a couple paces ahead of myself on Laurier, that bird might well have up and died right on my head. I probably would have screamed like a woman.
Dude, it probably hit a building window a few floors above and fell down…
S
I don’t know. Can a small sparrow be faked out by the heavily tinted windows of modern downtown office buildings and get up enough speed to knock itself out? Wouldn’t the urban bird be more hip and savvy than that?
Perhaps not.