Sparrow Spring Engineers
Mi West
(April, 2013 &More)
This is the coldest Scandinavian winter within the memory of man; deep snow, an orgy of darkness, and a supernatural silence that makes me hear the snowflakes fall. An infinite meditation in stillness, for all creatures. This year, the snow of the world seems to have fallen on this very street, and the thermometers at human nests are running out of scale.
***
I hardly hear the soft, unobtrusive knock on my window. Many neighbors up here are birds, so I open it ajar. My toes immediately feel the ice-cold downdraft.
A sparrow. Surprisingly, he has picked up quite some human twitter. “Good evening,” he says in his tiny voice.
I reply while wrapping my feet in a folded blanket. “Sit down, please. Well, I mean up, near where the heat flows out. If you were a human then you might remember icy Moomin-Valley winters from fairy tales.”
“I’m a bird, and birds don’t. This winter was a surprise; a stress test of survival of the fittest—or the inventive.”
“I’ve seen some of the snow on the roof opposite has slid over the gutter, making a small cave.”
“Scandinavia counts as a well-lighted place among two-legged flyers. So does the guttering. I’m staying just opposite your window and your writing lamp,” he tweets, “and, a dark morning when my sweetheart and I were exhausted after mating, we watched the beautiful icicles outside this window, glittering in a narrow ray of lamp light. They matched her glittering eyes. We probably kept on for hours.”
“Oh, kept watching them?” I say, assuming sparrows are not that much into Tantra. Their soaring is more literal.
“Yes. Some parts of the cave are warm, and cozy, too, thanks to heat-insulation gaps inside the roof.”
I laugh aloud and reply “We humans tend to believe that technology of the two-legged is perfect.”
“The roof is a warm proof to the contrary; it’s perfect from a bird’s-eye view only.”
“But, rather than from gaps in technology, our distress comes from too little time spent on the essentials of life.”
“Whereas birds are turned on equally by a high-flying vision and a tiny, down-to-earth grain.”
“Many humans feel less and less in touch with both turn-ons,” I reply softly.
“Then imagine a sparrow mind, set soaring by things as simple as a hole in the snow!”
“But, isn’t there more to it? You’re in an attractive location, too. None of the cats in this district are hungry, and their two-legged owners―or butlers, in the cat's arrogant opinion―afford plenty on the bird feeders, too.”
“Right, and birds of prey find food in the nearby forest, enough to stay away from the human territories where I hang around.”
“So, your life is all about cheating the worst cold snap in centuries?”
“Yes, apart from mating. Necessity is the mother of invention; I remembered a couple of swifts.”
“Oh, they built a whole nest at the base of that roof last spring.”
“That’s why I tried pecking at the snow cave, from the outside. It’s a fancy building material! As soon as your beak is through the snow crust, a hole is easily made all the way. I crept in.”
“Some cozy heat inside?” I ask, assuming sparrows don’t use the wealth of puns and sex allusions that human languages offer.
“Sure; sheltered from the wind, and some daylight coming in through the hole. Smart guys in my flock have imitated me, moving to nearby insulation gaps. You see, I’m not a trend slave. I set trends."
“This is a privilege of the small and inventive. Big birds can’t imitate you because the gutter is too narrow, and they do not want the risk of being labeled copycats.”
“A nasty insult among us birds, by the way.”
Apparently, sparrows enjoy some of the aerial ambiguity inherent in human languages.
“Sounds logical. Anyway, the big ones must wait instead, patiently high up in the trees every morning, quietly saving all their energy until the scarce daylight and the horizontal sunbeams at least take the chill off their darkest feathers.”
“While my sweetheart and I keep making love in our hideaway. You see, sparrow engineering is on purpose. We’re birds, not nerds.”
I’m just as impressed by such a profound sunrise celebration as I am by the daily sunrise song outside. I realize sunrise has an extreme duration at high latitudes.
I say, “Your flock’s vocal clarity has improved, too.”
“Yes, thanks to the hike in our housing standard. The females are enchanted. Life has become pretty intense: Singing in daytime, mating at night.”
I drop all preconceived ideas about sparrows as he goes on.
“Enjoying the magic of flight; literally in daylight, figuratively in twilight. That’s the way natural selection works, breeding the brightest, cuddliest, singingest.”
Natural selection seems important to birds, unlike the superlative form.
I reply, “You’re bright enough to cheat the worst winter ever. I bet the good warm times are back before your cave finally melts near spring, like the heart of a two-legged sweetheart. Last summer, humans didn’t even believe that a bird’s song imitated my alarm clock at daybreak; well done, although annoying at 1:00 a.m. near summer solstice.”
“Until then, we pre-cultivate the spring. It blooms inside. Not only humans know what profuse lovemaking is; just in case you’re doubtful, we’ll introduce on-the-fly a couple of cute results of this cozy life,” he twiddly-bits.
“When do you expect hatching?”
“In a couple of months. They’ll be a generation brighter, cuddlier, talented-ier, you name it-ier.”
Mating is important to birds, unlike the comparative form.
“The Spring song goes on, year after year,” I reply. I wasn’t totally wrong. They have sex for progeny too, although they pick up a sweet Tantric tone now and then.
“You bet! Talk to you later,” he concludes while vanishing into thin air, for another magical evening with a being called sweetheart.
***
I close the window, switch the kettle on, and put my toes on a warm radiator. A parallel reality? A dream? My ten frozen toes might be unparalleled, but they’re all real. Just like the spring to come.
Mi West, apart from his past nonfiction credits, is currently sliding in slipstream, rooted in the European airspace rather than the soil. He lives in Scandinavia among humans, birds, woods, wild animals and addictive ski trails. He heard classical music daily while growing up in a family of artists, hence some inclination for sounds and music patterns when he writes.
In addition to decades of yoga practice, his thinking was shaped early by such authors as F. S. Fitzgerald, G. Orwell, R. Bradbury, A. Koestler, M. Kundera, E. John, H. Miller, S. Lagerlöf, H. Hesse, K. Gudmundsson, J. Hašek, W. Mogerg, among others.
His story was inspired by a flock of sparrows who survived a cold snap and a snow dump that were out of this world.