I presume he died in the summer.
The little blue bird in the stove.
I found him in the fall, when the weather turned cold, desiccated and dead, his beak pressed up against the glass doors, looking out into the cabin.
It was sad.
He must have come in the chimney, gotten trapped in the stove, and been drawn to the light.
He died there of dehydration.
Perfectly preserved, hunkered down, having met his fate.
I was surprised when I found him there, but only momentarily so, and, the stove broom in one hand, picked him up and put him on a nearby stack of books and proceeded to clean out the old ash and kindle a new fire.
When I moved the stack of books, to do some work on the walls, he moved with it too, undisturbed on top.
And there he has lain the few months since.
And that would be about that, except for a Facebook picture and an Internet stalker and the fact I don’t live in America.
I live in New York, where we are subjects, not citizens, and clamor for entitlements, not liberties.
But I’m ahead of myself.
A month or two ago, on a visit to the cabin, I took a picture of my books and posted it online. Some people are that way about books. I am that way about books. Show me your library and I will see your soul. I show off mine like a bird shows off its plumage or a young man flexes his muscles.
A matched set of Leonard Lee Rue III guides to American game animals and game fish, Talmage’s “Jesus the Christ,” a field guide to the birds, and a large-print New Testament. And on top, a dead bluebird.
And I put that on Facebook.
My only regret being that there was no “Leaves of Grass,” “The Strenuous Life” or short stories of Hemingway, three obvious omissions in a stack of books meant to be read by a man in a cabin in the woods.
But I put it on Facebook and I didn’t look back.
Until the cop came by.
This was the other day, a month or two after I put up the picture.
I got a text from a friend who was at my house. He said an environmental conservation officer had come by and wanted to talk to me.
I dialed the number, he answered, it wasn’t the friendly voice, and he said there had been a complaint.
A criminal complaint.
He said a criminal complaint had been filed in regard to something I had posted on Facebook.
The bluebird.
I felt the choke chain of my New York residency tighten around my neck.
I started to tell the story, he stopped me two or three words in, and then restrained himself, and I recognized that he had decided to sit back and let me hang myself. I didn’t like the dynamic between us. It was adversarial. He had a duty and I had an attitude, but it was what it was. I was about to be jammed up because somebody bitched about a picture of a dead bird on Facebook. A bird, by the way, too stupid to find its way out the same way it got in.
This wasn’t the first time. The last time I got a deer – too many years ago to count – somebody called the en con police to tell them I had said on the radio I shot the deer before sunrise. A preposterous lie. I wouldn’t shoot a deer outside legal parameters, and if I did, I wouldn’t say so on the radio. But there we sat, cop-to-suspect, and I’ve somehow got to prove a negative.
It’s normally good relations with these guys. A year or two ago an en con guy at a gas pump gave me the best tutorial on where to take my kids fishing I’d ever heard, and earlier this week out on a run one of them honked and waved as he passed.
But this call was not comfortable. Probably for both of us, for different reasons.
I recounted the story of the dead bird in the stove.
He recounted the particulars of the complaint, and the specific objections of the complainer.
And he informed me that, in New York, it is illegal to possess a blue bird, living or dead.
And if you find a blue jay or turkey feather in the woods, it’s best to just let it lie.
We had some back and forth, and he implied that the post should come down and the bird should go away.
I couldn’t tell if he was apologizing for the crazy complaint and the stupid law, or threatening an arrest if I didn’t comply. I said I would take down the picture. I didn’t think it was the time for dissertations on the First Amendment.
We hung up and I spent the rest of the day pissed off.
That I would be in legal jeopardy because a confused bird had a bad day.
If the dead bird is inside my cabin, it’s a crime. If I move it two feet, outside my cabin, it’s not a crime.
Is that what I’m supposed to do? Just chuck it out the door?
What would the state masters have me do?
Do I bury it? And if so, how deep, and how close to a flowing stream or public thoroughfare? How big can the shovel be, and will I need a permit, and should I wipe my arse from front to back or back to front?
Do I give the bird to the American Legion to burn with all the tattered flags? Do I bury it in a pet cemetery? Do I take it to the Senecas for ceremonial use?
Or do I just leave it there – the New York state bird – dead on top of a stack of books.
A metaphor of liberty in the state of oppression.