247. The Blackbird Mirage - Hollynn Huitt
L. Prang & Co., Red-winged Blackbird (1874)
There are many things I’ve tried to harden myself to as I’ve grown up—for the sake of my kids, for the sake of my sanity in this sometimes heartbreaking world.
For a week, I mourned the life of the red-winged blackbird lying on the edge of Norton Road. I passed him on my commute to town two times a day (at minimum, sometimes four), and each time I felt that sorrowful squeeze in my throat.
When I was young, my family knew to shout “Look away!” if they spotted a dead animal on the road. I’d close my eyes until we were safely past. When I was learning to drive at age fifteen on the rural roads of South Carolina, I almost drove the car into the ditch trying to avoid a squirrel. My dad admonished me. “You can’t cause an accident avoiding a squirrel.” Oh yes, I can, I thought. And I probably will.
Back to that poor bird: I couldn’t let it go. It was the first species my son learned to identify, with its distinctive call and the way it balances on top of long, dried stalks of grass, wings flashing red against the sepia-toned landscape of early spring. A line of absurd questions scrolled through my mind each time I passed. How did it get hit? What was it doing so close to the road, flying so low? Should I stop driving a car? Why are humans so terrible?
Then one day, an oncoming truck passed the blackbird just as I approached. The feathers ruffled in the truck’s wake, only I noticed that they were strangely clumped. It almost seemed to beckon to me. That’s when I realized: it was not a red-winged blackbird but a red and black work glove.
The relief I felt! The utter joy! The bird was not dead! It wasn’t even a bird in the first place!
Now, as I drive along, I find my eyes drawn to every little piece of debris. The shape that I was sure was a severed deer’s leg turned out to be just a birch log, delicately bent to resemble a knee joint, with a bone-white center. And that billowing trash bag up ahead? That was—oh, no. A dead porcupine. I tried to avert my eyes but it was too late. That night, in bed, I couldn’t sleep for seeing the quills waving in the wind, the slumped shape of it.
There are many things I’ve tried to harden myself to as I’ve grown up—for the sake of my kids, for the sake of my sanity in this sometimes heartbreaking world. It may be a little ridiculous to be cast so swiftly into despair by the sight of roadkill, but you know what? I’m proclaiming, right here, right now, that I won’t be changing.
I feel just as strongly as I did as a child. I care just as much. Now, though, I peer through my windshield hoping for gloves.
- Hollynn Huitt
