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.

“Knock it off rat!” commanded one of Darwin’s friends staggering drunkenly towards the cage poking the owl. “You meat puppet! I’m a barn owl!” The two screech at each other but suddenly an authoritative holler from the other room halts the poker. The smell of rosemary and brandy sweeps into the room as the shiskabobbing assailant realizes he is arguing with a bird. Rottenbird scoffs at the drunkard's exit. He continues pleading his case into the brandy ridden air, but there was a smell far more sinister that he couldn’t quite place his talon on. “These men reason with their hearts and not with their eyes. How shortsighted." Rottenbird decays. As hopeless as Rottenbird appeared on the outside, the old owl shook with the hate of a thousand suns. Rottenbird defecates out of the cage, onto the floor nearly missing Charles Darwins’s drinking glass. His paltry efforts were scattered across the tile like a poor man's Rorschach test. It was Rottenbird’s first sign of relief and it most likely would be his last.

The cuckoo clock from the other room strikes ten to begins its hourly mocking. “Time to die. It’s time to die. Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” Rottenbird springs from his slump and grumbles towards the empty cages. “Do chains make an owl captive? Is not the mockery from that spring-loaded bird enough?” He preens and turns his rotten head towards the oak door. A quick snap of the fingers commands two men wearing tuxedos to bring Rottenbird’s cage into the next room. He retorts, “They say the early bird catches the worm but I say yesterday’s bird didn’t plan well enough.” The caged owl is ushered into the next room. He could see diagrams and illustrations of animal skeletons posted on the wall. Tomes occupied these walls and although Rottenbird couldn’t read, he knew these books were heavily used because they were stained by the accumulation of oily fingerprints. Rottenbird sees a room full of men eating soup from tortoise shells. The head of his good friend Puma watches from above. Dozens of armadillo shells crowd the corners of the room like luggage discarded by a weary traveler after a long trip. A sign reading “The Gourmet Club" hangs above the open window and although Rottenbird couldn’t read it, the writing was on the wall. Though there were no iguana’s to be seen, the stench of cold blood palpitates the air. It is difficult to differentiate all of Charles Darwin’s neatly stacked notebooks from party napkins but both acted as drink coasters tonight. The cage opens slowly. Rottenbird is enamored by his reflection in the dilated pupils of his onlookers, but he was only interested in one man’s gaze. Rottenbird finally locks eyes with Charles Darwin.

“Unmuzzled glutton!” Rottenbird thundered. “Are not your death-dealings quenched by your venomous conquests? Skunkish, onion-eyed evolutionist! I’ve heard the story about how you tried to bring forty-eight tortoises back to London from the Galapagos but not a single tortoise escaped your virile tongue. How long has your precious theory been tabled anyway? Fifteen years? Twenty years? Even an owl who can't tell time knows when one's window of opportunity shuts." Rottenbird carried on his swan song, “Blithering buffoon! Did not your failure to finish medical school doom you? To think that I, the great Rottenbird, can be compared on paper to other species is not only an insult to my heritage but to yours! A great and wise hunter, I am pitifully hunted and dressed as your obsession. These transgressions will bring about your assured destruction. You may have found solace in your noshing but to taste the great Rottenbird means death!”

A grave silence falls upon the room as if Rottenbird’s hooting made any difference at all. Then Charles Darwin raised his pasty hand and with a snap of his fingers, the two men in tuxedos remove his overcoat. The Charles Darwin pulls up his sleeves and embraces Rottenbird. Their wily eyes meet. The owl speaks, “Rottenbird doesn’t forget who Rottenbird is and the Charles Darwin will not forget either. Eat me fool!” At this, Charles Darwin begins plucking the feathers from Rottenbird sending the night bird into his fatal frenzy. Feathers cloud the air and like a judge with a gavel, the crunch of the butcher knife made Rottenbird no more.

Darwin’s gastronomical adventures came to an end when he ate that crusty old owl and had permanent indigestion. He was sick for many months and never truly recovered. For the rest of his life he had indigestion but his bad owl experience possibly made him all the wiser.