Kevin G. Cox

Rottenbird

“I am Rottenbird!” the old crusty barn owl roared, rattling the iron confine around his neck. The rest of this barn owl’s friends have already been devoured as evidenced by the empty cages around him. “The Charles Darwin and his brood of masticators ate everyone I knew,” the old barn owl recalled, taking a lean between the bars of his prison. “Poor Puma went with a side of mint jelly and fingerlings. The twin iguanas, Pearl and Emma met their maker like the armadillo as an amuse-bouche that led to the Charles Darwin’s favorite aperitif, tortoise soup.” Rottenbird tries to blink his eyes to erase these memories but visions of smooth pasty hands popping agoutis heads into mouths like stuffed mushrooms flooded his mind. In an attempt to regain his composure, Rottenbird puffs his chest and joaks, “But it will be I, the indigestible one, the destructor of stomachs, the sentinel of the gastrointestinal who causes my captor to drop anchor and rip him from his adventurous tongue.” The owl added, “I arrived in Cambridge in the middle of the night. One moment I was soaring the England night sky and the next, I was scrupulously being man-handled into this ferrous yoke.” Rottenbird twists his head violently shouting, “Chouette au Masque de Fer!” Rottenbird goes limp for a moment. He stares across the room to muffled chatter behind a large oak door. “It took this wise old owl only one night to figure out what this place is, for the vapors of former friends climb into my cage like ivy. Their memory still clings with the intensity of St. Elmo’s fire hugging a ghost ship.” Rottenbird wildly jerks the inviolable lock of the cage with his beak. Suddenly the oak doors open.