Pecking Order; Numbers II
by Jerry D. McDonnell©2014 In 1890 100 Starlings from Europe were liberated in New York’s Central Park. And there it was. A campground with wood table, travel trailer parking just off the less traveled Iowa county road surrounded on two sides by a corn field forest, a farmer’s house across the way. The Midwest. Apple pie peace USA. At summer’s sundown the Starlings came out of that Iowa cornfield forest shattering that Midwest apple pie peace like rabid rockets over London, like bombers over Berlin, like armed atoms over Nagasaki. Starlings came by the thousands like an exodus, their liberated wings colliding, fouling and fearing the air, the ground, the ears, thousands, tens of thousands of wings battling for space. churning the air into a cacophony of sound, a rasping racket, a descending wee-ee like, like, all the world’s treaties and prayers beating the sky black, snapping, beating, flaying, fouli