I have buried five bodies on my property so far...

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I have buried five bodies on my property so far...

Jul 05, 2022

Five tiny, feeble flightless birds whose names I failed to learn. When I find them, they look like they’re sleeping, eyes closed sweetly, collapsed into a dream on a patch of grass like a blanket.

But I know they’re not sleeping.

It’s the small feather attached to my cat’s lower lip, quaking in the breeze like a spirit desperately trying to escape its certain fate. It’s the blood droplets leading up to the bird, or the way its neck moves disjointedly when I slide the lip of a shovel beneath it, like a mother gently wedging a hand beneath a napping child to scoop her up and carry her off to bed.

I usually say some words of reassurance to the bird as I transport its body. Something meaningless but soothing if it could hear me and understand English. Today it was, “It’s OK, little one. You’re going home.”

Sometimes I apologize on behalf of the cat who is watching me from a distance, confused and annoyed as I take away his toy or throw away my gift. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry,” escaping under my breath with each step.

I carry it out of view of the cats, into an area they don’t frequent and out of the path of the weed whacker’s graspy tines. When I can, I make use of the holes the pigs dig. Any grave dug in this basalt ground is going to be shallow, but the pig holes have more depth than I can achieve on my own without heavy equipment. I do my best to cover it with extra dirt and grass so the cats aren’t tempted to reenact the gruesome death scene (I have been fooled before into hoping for the best when a toss in the air temporarily reanimated their prey’s lifeless body).

I didn’t think to mark the graves with anything that would stand out against the green growth I used to cover them. I haven’t gone back to these resting spots to check if the flies and worms are doing their work or if something else has exhumed the bodies. Instead, I imagine a time lapse of small, delicate skeletons laying underfoot while the indifferent jungle continues growing over them.

I mow the lawn once a week except when it’s raining heavily like it has been these past few. The grass grows faster in these conditions and doesn’t get a chance to dry out — and I don’t get the chance to mow it — before it rains again. The weeds that look like sparklers are starting to hit my shins now, which makes for more stealthy stalking. The rains make the worms come out, then the worms make the birds come out, and… when the cats succeed, the worms get their chance to be at the top of the food chain.

Fair is fair, I guess.

I’m still getting used to accepting what seems like a brutal cycle. But the more I observe it, the more I see the beauty and simplicity in the chaos. Bird hungry; bird eat worm. Cat hungry; cat eat bird. Worm hungry; worm eat bird.

There are no ulterior motives or grudges or vendettas to decode or enact. There is no long con at play (OK, maybe the worms), no long lines to wait in, no degree required, no taxes, no tickets. No hurt feelings or victimization or dramatization or meaning-making. It’s an interdependent dance and I’m a prop master who occasionally has to remove something from the stage and be moved by it.

There’s an equitable give and take at work here and none of it is good or bad. No one is any more in the right than anyone else is in the wrong. It’s just a bunch of animals doing what they’re programmed to do: live.

I remind myself that one day, whether through force or fatigue, that bird was bound to stop flying. One day, the cat will catch his last bird. One day, the worm will get the bird before it becomes food for another one.

I remind myself that someday I’ll be that bird, and someone will be whispering prayers of forgiveness over my limp body as they insert it back into the earth. And then the rains will come, and the worms will come and the body that anchored me will vanish. I am not sad about this; I am hopeful that on the remaining days between, I remember I can fly.