There are things the birds know first. The approach of a hurricane, a radiation leak, the poisoning of a river. You can tell that they know because they leave.
Sometimes a witness to their departure will not notice, until later. Looking back, they will remark how suddenly it occurred to them: there were no birds. Where did they go?
By then, the coming disaster had revealed itself. Before that, the birds disappeared quietly. For most would-be observers, their absence fails to register. It is a non-event. The catastrophic ones are often preceded by a series of non-events like this.
The birds know when to go. It is believed they also know when to return. On that count, those of us in the disaster zones look out and sigh, waiting. And we say to one another, “We’ll see.”
“Wait,” we say, “and see.” Like we know.
Sometimes, though, the birds don’t seem to know. Or if they do, are without other options. That’s when you get the dead bodies around the poisoned lake along a major flyway, or whole flocks falling from the sky. That’s when scientists arrive to collect the bodies.
“We don’t have enough evidence,” they say. In every official briefing they repeat this sentiment. We are in the middle of a non-event. In a time that has no other name, which is called ordinary time. One day we may call this time by another name: Before. But any before is nameless when you are inside it.
Darn. I thought the birds knew, all the time.