Ornithophobia

It was an experiment gone wrong. Hours of labor, days of sacrifice had all come to waste. The department building was all but abandoned that week. The grad students were on holiday and my fellow researchers on leave. The professors had also taken their time off at the end of the semester. It was just me and Bob, each in our own space.

I was frustrated at not getting the results I had so direly hoped for. All my research and planning had told me that I would get the right chromatography peaks. But they weren’t there the first time, or the seventh. I gave up after that seventh failure because they say seven is the magic number. And if I couldn’t get it the seventh time, I wasn’t gonna get it the eighth or the eightieth time.  

In a mangled mess of emotions I slammed out of the lab and went downstairs. The lift chimed onto the ground floor and the heavy glass doors were overcast with an orangey hue. Sunset through grey clouds. The security personnel weren’t at their desks. The immediate outside looked deserted. It wasn’t like an abandoned campus. The lawns had recently been mowed, no dust-laden benches around. The place was simply devoid of people that afternoon. But there was a presence that loomed heavy on the air. In the thick of the campus garden, there was a flock of birds. They were swan-like but appeared flightless; perhaps they were just hatchlings, albeit over-sized. They seemed disturbed, lost, out of place. I wasn’t exactly sure why they were there in the first place. I hadn’t known of rare migratory birds flying to this bleak part of the world and laying eggs in the middle of academic complexes. As I stood watching them, they started waddling. There were about half a dozen of them and each was heading in a different direction. They were visibly confused. The cause of their disturbance then manifested before my eyes. A dark, winged figure was swooping down in circles. The hatchlings quacked nervously. An ominous fear gripped my insides. A big-ass crow, almost the size of a Labrador, was gliding closer.

 I felt one among the hatchlings and sprinted as fast as I could. Its wings flapped somewhere above me and a putrid smell wafted down. I saw some of the hatchlings waddling away, their feathers all ruffled. A little ahead of me was a star-fruit tree; from one of its lower branches hung a water-gun. I darted towards the tree, hid under its foliage and reached for the water-gun. It was heavy, and filled with something fluorescent green instead of water. A bio-hazard symbol stamped on it told me that this was no ordinary water-gun. It should not have been hanging around this way. Just like those hatchlings were out of place. Just like the gigantic bird had no business being anywhere near me. Yet it was there and it was attacking the hatchlings one after another. The little, flightless creatures were bleeding from their backs, where the crow had pecked them with its hungry beak.

The hatchlings ducked under shrubs and bushes. The crow landed on its claws near one of the bushes. The hatchlings were screeching, in fear and foreboding. I took the water-gun with the biohazard symbol into my hands and went in like I had seen numerous soldiers in my brother’s PC games.

The crow was cawing back at the hatchlings with a venomous look in its deathly red eyes. As I moved into its field of vision, it jumped around to face me. In a flash it was heading right at me, moving with the agility of an experienced predator. My hands shook. I tried to aim for its beak. Whatever the fluid was inside the gun, I thought it would harm the big bird most in the face. Eyes were also a good option. I tried my best to aim at it and pressed the trigger. A gooey mess emanated from the tip and shot toward the bird. It fell a few inches from the bird’s claws, fuming. I figured it was some form of concentrated, acidic toxin that was definitely capable of harming the feathery fiend and shot at it with renewed vigor.

At close quarters, the putrefying smell was at its worst. The bird opened its beak wide to caw at me, and with it came the smell of death, of decomposing flesh. I backed up several steps, still trying to aim the toxin at the bird. But I was as good as a storm trooper in hitting my target. And the bird was springy on its feet.

The bird backed me into a bush and then sprang at me. With a strong, scapular movement it knocked the gun out of my hands. Never have I known fear as in that moment. The overpowering smell made me gag. The bird flapped its wings at me, thrashing me from all sides. It reached up to my waist and snapped at my arms. I was flailing my limbs every which way, keeping my eyes shut since it had struck the gun out of my hands. I could not bring myself to face the unbelievable evil that was attacking me.

I heard a plonk and felt the feathers cease moving. The bird had fallen still at my feet all of a sudden. I looked up to find Bob carrying the long, metallic arm of a mop. He had hit the bird hard and immobilized it. Bob didn’t seem ruffled by the size of the bird or the mess that I was in. Before I could thank him for knocking the bird out, he turned around and started walking back towards the department, like it was all in a day’s work for him. Run a PCR, cast a gel, knock a bird out, decontaminate some plates. No biggie.

With Bob gone, I was alone with the crow. The hatchlings seemed to have run off too. I stood watching the bird for a while. It was lying on its side, with half a wing unfolded beneath it. Then I saw its claw twitch. And I knew it was gonna get back up. Instinctively, I made the worst decision of the day and jumped onto the bird’s back. Before it could get back into its full senses, I grabbed hold of its sticky beak and twisted it around. I held the beaks shut with my hands and hoped that the bird’s neck would snap away. It turned out to be harder than I’d expected. The head turned almost a full three-sixty degrees. I began to get worried that perhaps this humongous beast could rotate its head like an owl. My hands felt weak from pulling the beak and I was scared that any moment the bird would rise and snap at my fingers.

But the neck twisted some more before coming loose. I let go of the bird and its head limped loose. It was surely dead. Yet my fear had not dissipated. Just to be sure that the monster was put down at last, I dug out a matchbox from my pockets and lit that bitch up. The feathers caught fire easily enough. It burned without protest, and with it the fetid air combusted as well. A greenish flame surrounded the burning bird. 

I should have run away from it the moment Bob had struck it down. Instead I killed it with my bare hands, burning the features of the disgusting creature deep into my memory. Try as I may I cannot forget its gory eyes and the feel of its grimy beak. And that is how I got myself this unrelenting fear of birds.