Avian Protectors: Honoring and Celebrating Their Messages

By Christina Rosso

My father, born in the fall of 1951, has always loved the haunting, mind-bending stories found in Alfred Hitchcock’s films and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. I remember spending New Years Eve and Day snuggled on the couch watching a marathon of the television sensation. Of spending sick days with Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart on the French Riveria or in a crowded New York apartment complex. I can’t recall the first time I saw Hitchcock’s 1963 The Birds, a loose adaptation of the 1952 Daphne Du Maurier short story with the same name, however, I remember carrying a sense of avian dread. A feeling in my bones that birds could declare war on the human faction whenever they grew tired of our antics.

Birds fly through mythology and folklore. Some are omens of death, while others have regenerative abilities. Some are half-human, half-bird, often femme-bodied, who lure men to their untimely deaths. In Egyptian mythology, Ra, a falcon-headed deity, is the Sun God. As of May 2021, there are an estimated 50 billion to 430 billion birds on Planet Earth. These avian creatures are an integral part of our ecosystem, yet how often do we pause to acknowledge their chirping or cawing presence? For me, it took a part-time job at a very famous abandoned prison.

For nine months, I worked as a historic tour guide at Eastern State Penitentiary in North Philadelphia. Some posit it to be one of the most haunted places in America, with stories of nefarious and heckling ghouls throughout the eleven-acre grounds. In my experience, the abandoned prison is haunted by a terrible history of racism and mass incarceration. Much lore surrounds Eastern State, as does superstition. One superstition of sorts is this: one employee will find all of the dead and dying birds on site (of which there are a considerable amount). When that person leaves, a new person will begin to discover the birds. In the Spring and Summer of 2016, I was the bird finder at the penitentiary.

Often baby birds would fall from their nests onto the dusty slabs of pavement. The first time I found one, I had to give a ten-minute tour of the punishment cells, an earlier form of solitary confinement that continues to plague our prison system today. When I resurfaced from the underground space, the bird had been trampled by inobservant tourists. I promised that bird I wouldn’t let that happen again. After that, each time I found a dying bird on-site, I made sure these animals died with dignity. Sometimes that meant sitting with them, shielding them from being stepped on by visitors, or taking leaves and moving them off the path to a more peaceful place.

I learned quickly that it was worse when they were still alive, their tiny lungs laboring for breath. Long red gashes quivering across their pink, featherless bodies until the wheezing stopped, silence and death ringing in my ears. That year, it seemed that dead and dying birds surrounded me. Everywhere I looked, they were splattered on the sidewalk of my South Philadelphia neighborhood or in the grass at the nearby park. I always stopped to tell them how sorry I was, and if I was able, I collected their bodies, putting them to rest.

Around this time I started drafting a short story collection about magic, identity, and power. Set in New Orleans, I took inspiration from my favorite city and my favorite stories, real and imagined, about witches and goddesses and monsters in the shadows. I shaped a character in part after the Greek Goddess Demeter and in part after myself. A woman whose purpose was to travel to the plane in-between life and death and help the recently departed find peace. I had this character find dead and dying creatures as a child—cats, alligators, and birds. I told myself even if it weren’t possible for me to become this character, perhaps I could still help the animals that sought me out find peace.

I often tell my husband that to some I must appear unhinged the way I walk around Philadelphia and now its suburbs talking to birds as though I’m Snow White. I wish them good morning. I ask how they slept. I thank them for their saccharine chirping and the pleasant joy of watching them fly from one tree to the next. I always feel a swell of gratitude when these birds come to me alive, with the possibility of flying anywhere and seeing anything. And when I find them at the end of their journey, I hope they had a wonderful life.

Since that summer at Eastern State Penitentiary, I have considered birds to be one of my familiars. In European and American folklore, familiars were believed to be supernatural entities that assisted witches with their magical practices. I choose to use this term instead of spirit animal or power animal, as I do not want to further appropriate or cause harm to Indigenous cultures and their language. For me, a familiar is any animal I feel a deep connection with. One in which I feel a mutual understanding and respect. I believe these animals have found me and chosen me. This is especially true with birds.

When we came back to tour our home a second time, my husband and I were allowed to roam the property by ourselves. Alex went through the house, registering every detail of it while I explored outside. In the front yard, a robin landed before me. At that moment, I knew this was our house. I have always been someone who gets “feelings” about a place and takes messages from the universe seriously. This was my message. A robin means new beginnings, hope, and good things to come. We submitted an offer on the house the following day.

Since moving into this home, I have worked on becoming acquainted with all of my bird friends, or avian protectors, as I like to call them. The robin returns daily, as does a crow, several catbirds and mourning doves. On the morning I cleansed our home of negative energy, I found a catbird feather on the side porch. Catbirds, as particularly vocal birds, offer lessons in communication, by asking us to both practice listening and singing our own songs. Their energy is rejuvenating, optimistic, and inspiring. Perhaps this catbird is reminding me that my voice matters and that this new home is the perfect space to manifest the projects I’ve long been putting off. I brought this feather inside and have now collected several more offerings from my various avian protectors. I plan to meditate on these creatures’ symbolism and messages.

Now that I’m settling into life at the new house, I want to continue to deepen my relationship with the birds that frequent the trees and plant life in my yard. I plan to build a birdfeeder for my familiars to offer them nourishment. I plan to decorate my altar with their feathers and to call their messages and energy before spellwork. Now that I have a yard, I plan to collect and bury any dead birds I find in the neighborhood. I plan to incorporate them into the stories I write. And I plan to talk and listen and sing alongside these incredibly delightful creatures.

In The Birds, Mrs. Bundy, an elderly ornithologist, says to our heroine, Melanie Daniels, “Birds are not aggressive creatures, Miss. They bring beauty into the world. It is mankind, rather... It is mankind, rather, who insists upon making it difficult for life to exist on this planet.” I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately, and how I feared birds for so long without ever really knowing them. About how humans bring suffering and destruction to the earth and its creatures. How our culture allows fear to drive us to ignorance. My eyes and ears are open, ready to learn and relearn, to accept any messages offered to me, and for that I am grateful.

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Christina Rosso (she/her) is a writer and bookstore owner living outside of Philadelphia with her bearded husband and rescue pup. She is the author of CREOLE CONJURE (Maudlin House, 2021) and SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications, 2020). Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. For more information, visit http://christina-rosso.com or find her on Twitter @Rosso_Christina.

On Beaches this Autumn

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

I keep dreaming of beaches, not night dreams, but daydreams. When I teach from home on Wednesday mornings, my throat hurts because I’m not used to talking for so long anymore. I feel my entire self squirm every time I open a new tab on my computer and a new window opens.

I live in the Central Valley of California, in a town where the heat settles like dust, even on the first day of autumn. It is simultaneously rural and urban.

I daydream about beaches: Santa Cruz and Carmel by the Sea. I think about the last time I saw the sea. I think about how I scooped egg from its shell from my breakfast, packed neatly in a deep brown basket by the sea. I think about my dad buying me blackberry gelato after he and my mom split up. Before I knew what such a thing was and what I should be grateful for, my family setting food in my hands in the cold water breeze made me think of my death and shake.

I document everything I do on looseleaf paper—virtual meetings, missteps, canceled hotel reservations, and daily word count goals. I dream of beaches because they're so close to me. Past vineyards and rusted metal dinosaur statues. Past signs that say, Pray for Rain in large black letters. Two hours in either direction, and I'm there.

Quarantine by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

BY LESLIE CONTRERAS SCHWARTZ

Quarantine

The lights in the bedroom flickered off and on. I lay in our bed listening to a heavy thumping coming from somewhere, quickening. In a half-dream, I created the idea of walking to the door and shouting, Who’s doing that? Even the thought of it was tiring, and I rolled over with eyes half-closed, lucid enough to be afraid to sleep but longing for it with the same urgency I longed to take a deep breathe without pain, or to be able to sit up with my lungs feeling crushed. I tried to fill my thoughts without something other than the every second of half-breathing, the crushing and stupor.

Was the sound growing near? Was it a foot banging a door, my daughter running circles in the living room, feet pounding in a rhythmic pattern? Was it the neighbor at some task again that required loud repetitive pounding and screeching? The questions were something to latch onto in my mind. I entertained them.

A slit of light broke from the bedroom door and my son crawled in beside me, wrapping his small limbs around mine underneath the coat of blankets. He was whispering but I could not hear because of the thumping. Who is doing that, I said. I slept.

My husband woke me to feed me soup, water from a straw. I sat up in bed, the room bluing. Our five-year-old was jumping on the bed, adding a beat to the drumming that started again when I opened my eyes (though I was sure I heard it in my sleep). It had been weeks since I’d left either the bed, or the couch, laying, blinking, and when awake, staring through the window, at a wall, at one of the children’s faces. Breath came as if through a tiny sieve, which I gulped in small pockets. You’re here, the doctor said this morning on the phone. Be grateful. So the air like fish eggs, like the meager rationing in the form of pills. Sucking, coughing, my chest strained and ready to snap. Nebulizer hush and burr. Inhaler sip. Eight more times. Times seven. Again. Times sixty days.

The world shimmered in blue, the faces of my son, my husband and our girls, cast in that same blue. One morning or one night, or the next day, or the night that was yesterday and before, tomorrow, I dreamt of running at full speed down our street, past the school, toward the bayou ten blocks away. The banks were filling with rain, ready to break over the edge of the concrete embankment, and I ran so hard every part of me ached and knew that this feeling, familiar, happened yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I woke up wheezing and choking. The thumping in my ears, my own heart racing, like I was running, every second running.

At the insistence of my husband, I sat outside wrapped in a blanket and feeling shorn. I watched my children play in the front yard while the light flickered through the leaves of the tree on the lawn. Underneath the world—or was it beside it, along it, between it? (There was no relative space to pin it)—I saw the pulsing of blue, an under-color to the kaleidoscope of reality’s rough imagery—my son’s kid sneakers of black and red and white, flashing lights when he jumped, my eight year old’s plastic sandals, both of them dangling off the edge of a spider swing, their small hands flayed out and waving. The laughter, her sigh. Underneath it all was this color, not an earthly blue, blue of ocean, precious stone or gem cut into rock, a sky flanking a horizon. No. This blue which was not blue was the color of sacred, deep, with a center to it, blood of childbirth, the whitened lips of the dead, the infant’s purple wail—all of it mixed together, long and unraveling, a cruel silence with a terrifying bell inside.

I rested my head back on the chair and stared at the sky that was no longer the sky. I blinked and felt close to that color—this underwater, the blue eggs, blue veins on an infant’s foot, the black feather of a blue jay that feigned blue, the blue mouth of a glacier. Was this what ran parallel and twinned to our lives, a universe linked with a battered rope to this one, where I had died, and hanging by a thread to the universe where I lived. The giant bell in its cruel silence behind the blue, and my rollercoaster heartbeat readying me for the terrifying drop to the ground. I longed to hear the bell. I would not share it, only save it inside my body, and never, even to my worst enemies, tell anyone the sound it made that killed small parts all at once with a blow. I opened my eyes, feeling heavy. I had already heard the bell. I had already imagined my children without me. I sat feeling the holes of it, growing cold. Light overhead grew brighter until wind threw the branches together, a dark shadow enveloping our family. Spin faster, I said to my children. Do it again.

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Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the author of Who Speaks for Us Here (Skull + Wind Press, 2020), and the collections Nightbloom & Cenote and Fuego (St. Julian Press, 2016, 2014). Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, among other publications. She is the Houston Poet Laureate.