The album cover reminds me of this time when I was a child taking a walk with my father. Every once in a while he’d let me go on his “tours,” as he called them. We walked through a path by a creek. We came to a line of trees and dad told me to look up and see all the European Starlings sitting on the leafless branches. He said Starlings weren’t native to our area, but in the late 19th century, “like some attacking cancer buried deep in our bones that rises like the hydra to eat our love,” they were introduced from Europe to New York. Now there are millions here. My father said, of the bird class, they ranked high on the list of birds he’d like to beat.We stared at the Starlings for a while and my father asked me if I wondered why these hundreds of birds don’t just swoop down and peck us to death. I asked him if birds would ever do that, and he said, no, but if they got poisoned they could act real crazy. Then he pointed to a microwave that someone had heaved into the creek by the trees.
When we got home he asked me if I wanted to watch the movie The Birds. I told him I had school tomorrow. He said I didn’t have to go, so I stayed up with him to watch the movie. When I told Rachel that story she asked me if I didn’t have nightmares that night since it was such a terrifying movie. Up until then I didn’t even realize it was a horror movie because my father was clearly rooting for the birds. I’ve always considered it a movie about overcoming obstacles, like Hoosiers.
