Red Icicles

A rare ice storm hit East Tennessee this morning, shutting down schools and causing car wrecks. It was quite beautiful though: a landscape of silver-coated trees beneath a stretch of blue mountains. Countless icicles hung from telephone wires and the eaves of houses and shacks. Many folks were out taking photos.

But the storm wasn’t much of an inconvenience for me—I’m a writer, I work at home. And in that respect the morning was just like any other.

That is, until about 9:30.

I was hunkered down in my writing room at the time, the location of all my books, movie posters, and monster toys—action figures, I mean—editing a short story. That’s when a series of small bangs arose from the kitchen area of my prefab house.

“What the hell is that?” I said, glancing at the Wolf Man.

I walked out into the living room, mug of cold coffee in hand, eyes half shut beneath an uncombed head of hair. I made a right turn at the dining area—a spacious extension of the kitchen—and faced the sliding doors of the back patio. There, a bright red cardinal was flying against the glass.

“Dude,” I said. “What are you doing?”

The cardinal dropped onto a patch of snow, limp and exhausted.

“Don’t kill yourself, bird brain,” I said to it through the glass.

I wasn’t too concerned though, as birds, especially cardinals, had a habit of starting fights with their own reflections. A territorial thing. And they never seemed to truly injure themselves in the process.

I glanced at the microwave clock and groaned—it was too early for a beer. So I shuffled back to the writing room and took a moment to admire my favorite zombie action figure. That’s when a series of louder bangs began.

“Here we go again,” I said to the zombie. “Bird braaains,” I imagined the zombie saying back.

This time, about a dozen birds were whacking themselves against the patio doors. Pop, went a sparrow. Pop, a wren. Pop-pop, a pair of titmice.

“What the hell?”

I looked slightly to my left. Frankenwhiskers, my tiger striped cat, was staring at the lower cabinet where I kept his food.

“Don’t you see this shit, Frank?”

That’s when I noticed the birdfeeder I’d hung off the back eave: it was completely iced over, the tasty morsels trapped inside. And it was nearly empty.

“Is that what you’re all so creased about? Can’t get to the birdseed? Well that’s a dumb reason to bang your skulls against my window!”

Frankenwhiskers walked up to me and began figure 8-ing between my legs. If I didn’t feed him soon he’d open the cabinet with his paw and start biting the cat food bag. That’s when it occurred to me: the birds wanted inside the house, they wanted the birdseed that was in the plastic green bin near the patio doors. No doubt they’d seen me open it each time I refilled the feeder.

“Okay, just calm down,” I said to the birds. “Sheesh!”

As I searched around for something to break the ice with, a pair of mockingbirds flew up and began hopping along the patio doors, chattering to one another as they peered into the house. A moment later the phone rang: my lovely fiancée calling from Chicago where she was attending a conference.

“How’s the writing going?” she asked.

I may have lied when I assured her it was going “super superbly.” She hadn’t laughed at that. What did make her laugh, however, was my “story” about the birds.

“It’s true!” I said. “Here, listen.” I put the phone next to the patio doors, but all was silent. The birds had gone. “Ah hell, you bastards.”

“Okay, well, see you in a couple of days then,” she said. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

After feeding the cat, I got distracted by another phone call and then went back to the writing. Somehow I’d forgotten all about the birdfeeder. For the next couple of hours I was pretty much unaware of anything but my story, though I did hear pitter-patter on the roof now and then, and the cracking of ice.

By noon I was back in the kitchen, enjoying a tasty PBR/PB&J combo. As I went to crack open the beer, a windowpane shattered and a long stream of birds came rushing into the house—all with sharp icicles in their beaks. Frankenwhiskers meowed “Shit!” and ran behind the couch. Pussy.

“Whoa, wait a minute. Waaait a minute!” I announced to the Hitchcockian gathering, bits of sandwich tumbling from my mouth. A crow swooped in and landed atop the birdseed bin where it began to tap the lid with its icicle. “Okay, okay, I get it—you’re hungry. No problem!”

I inched my way toward the birdseed bin, eyeing each bird cautiously as I went. Some were perched on chairs and cabinets, others stood directly on the counter, their icicles pointed forward. A turkey—seriously, a turkey?—poked its head through the broken window holding a large, double-spiked icicle of its own. The mockingbirds from earlier zipped past me and landed on the floor next to the couch.

As I reached down for the bin, the crow lifted off and flew up to the kitchen table. There it puffed up its chest, gave me the cold eye, then “sharpened” its icicle on the edge of the table and pooped.

A second later, Frankenwhiskers howled and ran out from behind the couch with two icicles stuck in his back; the mockers had got him. I nearly screamed and made a move to help the poor thing, but the birds were staring me down, heads tilted as if listening to my thumping heart. Silence followed. No sound but the drip-drip of a few icicles. So I held my breath, took the lid off the bin, and looked inside.

I was all out of birdseed.

(From the book The Hunchback's Captive and Others)