The Bird I ate for Breakfast

The first thought I had was that the roof was caving in. I sat up in bed my eyes were wide and my heart was racing. Panicked eyes raced around the quiet room. It was morning and the sun shown through the large picture window beside my bed. My apartment was neat and well kept. Nothing was out of place. In fact it all looked quite lovely reflecting the light of the northeastern sun. Looking to the window I saw and equally pleasant scene. White dew held the grass in its place. It was autumn in Alaska and the Birch and Poplar trees were bright yellow. The tundra in the higher elevations was a deep red. A carpet of burgundy that made the whole of the mountains look as though they were on fire.
My heart settled down after a minute but I was still convinced that something had awoken me besides a dream. I thought I remembered noise. Something like a loud explosion, a sharp cymbal that nearly made me leap from my bed. The mystery was that beyond the chirping birds I had no evidence of any such noise. I got up and looked under the bed. I left the bedroom and examined my kitchen slash living room. A sink full of dishes sat in my sink. Bachelor I was and doing dishes was never high on my priority list. My general rule became that if the cupboard was bare, it was time to do the dishes. I scanned the counter for any displaced plates or glasses. Not a one seemed to be moved. If this mystery noise came from the kitchen it was not from fallen dishware.
I looked across the room. My living room area consisted of a couch, a table and a chair. Like Thoreau’s cabin in the woods I had one seat for sitting another for company and society, should they come over, would have to stand. Nothing was out of place here either, so I put on my slippers and took my search outside. The old man that I rented from had enclosed the under part of the deck of his house to make my apartment. The ceiling was low and the walls drafty but the rent was cheap and the view was spectacular. I came to Alaska to live on the edge of the last frontier. The spot that I found to call home was perched in the clouds and at the edge of my dreams.
Alaska is a very active place for earthquakes. I had felt several before and began to wonder if what had woke me up was the house itself bending under the moving earth. I walked around the side of my apartment inspecting the structure of the walls. I had seen grocery store windows bend like sheets of plastic under the strain of an earthquake. I had also felt an earthquake toss my belongings and myself as if I lived in an unbalanced washing machine. I looked for cracks in the glass or signs of damage. The apartment walls were filled with large windows. These didn’t help at all to keep the warmth inside when it was cold but the openness fed the fantasy that I was camping every day of the week.
I breathed the thin cool air into my lungs. It was crisp and a little painful to hold in my chest. It smelled of dying leaves, wet grass and blue sky. The air wrapped around my limbs and made my hair stand at attention but the sun warmed my face. It was the perfect fall morning. The air was chilled but the sun was warm and reassuring. Winter was coming but no one could feel that sun on their face and believe that it would last forever. I looked at the corner posts of the house. I examined the frames of the windows all were as they should be. The morning mystery seemed to be unsolvable. Perhaps I had dreamed after all even if my heart told me otherwise. I was about to give up. I looked though the window at my bed. What could have attacked me with such violent fury in that space without leaving a single clue to its identity? At a loss I looked to the flower box at the bottom of the window. There I found my answer.
A Ptarmigan is an artic game bird. Locals call them mountain chickens. Speckled brown and white they are common and only a little smaller than the average domestic chicken. The other striking feature of the Ptarmigan is the fact that they are as dumb as a box of rocks. Local hunters have told me that you can find them in groups, sometimes feeding together. If you shot one in the group the others will look on unimpressed. There’s no flying away or taking off in panic. The birds calmly seem to accept that there is now more food for the rest of them. A hunter can take an entire patch of birds home in this way. One after another until that last Ptarmigan surly must raise an eyebrow to question what is happening. Then it too is dispatched.
In the flower box in the center of my window lay a Ptarmigan. Its neck was broke and it’s body warm. I picked it up and it’s heat felt good on my now chilled fingers. It was suddenly clear to me what had happened. The bird had flown, slamming itself into my window. The impact had killed it and nearly killed me of fright. The noise from the impact must have been unmistakable. I marveled that the glass held and didn’t shower me with shards as I lay in my bed.
The bird’s death was now a part of my life. To waste such a sacrifice would be to shut out the lesson this bird was trying to teach me. I knew what I had to do. I went beck to my kitchen and turned on the small gas stove. With hunting knife and white glass bowl in hand I headed down the mountainside away from the house. Once I found a spot suitably away from the house I dressed the bird. Removing its head and organs I then skinned it’s body taking the feathers with it. When I was done it was little more than a pound and no longer a bird. It was food ready for consumption.
After a quick rinse I popped it into the oven. 30 minutes later I was sitting by the window eating my breakfast. I stared out at the trees, blue sky, grass and clouds. The world was beautiful and perfect that morning. More perfect than any other I had remembered. It was something I might have missed if it hadn’t been for this Ptarmigan that decided that I had been asleep for too long.