Sing a song of sixpence
Pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing
How is I know this fucking thing? — Mother Goose? Yeah, let’s go with Mother Goose
So I’m driving back from the swamplands. Oh wait, let’s back things up a few hours, believe me, this loose tale’s tail won’t suffer, won’t benefit either, but, you know, we’re going back a few hours.
So I’m chatting with the GF about coming over later and she’s going to call me back. I set the phone down and it decides it’s going to upgrade the system. No, hilarity didn’t ensue, it just upgraded. The GF and I have the same phone but different providers, so I kind of knew it was coming; her’s did it a few weeks prior. We had a faux crisis because it appeared as though her emoji’s had been replaced with weirder ones. Mine wouldn’t even recognize them, it’d just show this kind of mesh that I suppose is android for image not available. Because we are grown ass humans and didn’t really need emoji’s we used the heck out of them for our own private jokes.
So the upgrade also added weird shit and sort of turned on my mobile facebook messenger thing and told everybody on facebook to welcome me to messenger. Not everybody, just those on my friends list. Again, grown ass human, I don’t have a thousand fake friends, I pretty much know everybody on there IRL or, you know, IPRL (in pseudo real life, no offense, but I mean folks like y’all. Not implying you’re not real, but I’ve only gotten to poke one or two of y’all to test your relative corporeality.) Fortunately only two people sent me messages. The GF and my ex sister in law. It would have been ok if one or two of y’all had as well, but I can’t remember which facebook guy I am mobile. I have three accounts. I used to cheat at card games with them (in a five person room I could be three of them). Each account has diminishing facebook friends.
So I exchanged quick pleasentrys with XSIL and told her I had to go, I was heading to the swamp. She quoted something from Princess Bride about fire swamps. I would have sent a smiley face but all my emoji’s were cockeyed. Why do I have I Ching symbols in the pack of emoji’s? I don’t know. So I did drive out to the swamp, parts of which are called wetlands, but, having lived in the wetlands in Oregon (Johnson creek area for the one or two smart asses who might ask cause they know) and having grown up here, I’m pretty sure it’s swamp. One of the backroads I take to get to where the GF is currently living dips so the road is almost even with this gray green water stagnant with algae and dead tree limbs.
The GF and I and the dog play and giggle for a while and then I’m driving home out of the low swamp back to the not so low swamps (in spring and fall there is a small pond in the side yard here. It wasn’t there when I was a kid, the yard is long enough and almost wide enough to play baseball and I did. Home plate would have been in the middle of the seasonal pond) I mean I think this town is sinking.
In the meridian between the two directions of what used to be temporary M-78 for the better part of fifty years, and now, I think, is temporary 69 leading into permanent I-69, I see this creature; fat, really fat with a long slender neck poking it’s head at, I assume some dead thing. I mean the critter was big enough to see over the slope and swamp dip of the meridian, but head and tail were too low. I looked like the body of a peacock, a really fat peacock, or, perhaps a pretty zombie vulture. I mean the neck was to slender and elegant to be any sort of vulture I’ve ever seen before. I only reason I’m thinking vulture is because the way the neck was moving it sure looked like it was yanking pieces of carrion out of a bigger chunk of carrion. Yes, I know, a vulture walks on a plane with a carcass the stewardess says “What the hell is that?” The vulture says carry-on.
You’re thinking I was high. I was not. You don’t believe me but for the sake of argument you concede the point and figure it couldn’t have been peacock. Yes, it couldn’t. It couldn’t be a vulture either. It was impossibly fat to be a bird of prey. I’d like to think it wasn’t a bird at all except for the neck and the movement of the neck which drew my attention and the ugly brown vole looking color seemed more feathery than furry. I was moving a little to fast to stop and there isn’t really a shoulder on the meridian side and I’m not sure I really wanted to see what the fuck that was. I mean curiousity, yes, and if it was easy to stop and look my dumbass probably would have. It wasn’t impossible to stop or turn back around, but I would have really really wanted to see what the fuck it was and even now, a day later and at home keyboard brave I’m still not entirely sure I want to see it. I’d like to know what it was in a general sort of a way though.
Fucking weird.
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