Читать книгу Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation - Curtis LeBlanc - Страница 9

All the stormwater ponds in my hometown are overrun by giant goldfish, insatiable as teenagers demanding new love over and over, going from bus stop to bus stop eating everything they can afford with their grocery-store cheques and sliding-scale allowances.

I’ve been a sucker for the tragedy of memory, snuck into the beach-town kids’ bingo tournament, slipped the neighbour boy a five to buy contraband cards to play with. I won an orange foam football on a vertical line and claimed my kid was back in bed, told the caller this is what he would’ve wanted.

That’s all this is. Beer drunk from an inconspicuous coffee cup at the picnic table of a pitch-dark summer. Fresh crab caught between two tennis racquets, underbellies bashed in with the handle of a hairbrush. Dreams of planes emergency landing in the streets of Manhattan as we collect our bags and go for coffee after.

I’m twenty-six, overrun with the impossibility of ebbing back to KerPlunk or pick-up sticks. Drinking Canadian Club in an empty soccer field minutes before lightning. Climbing elementary school roofs for a better view. Holding an almost-stranger’s soft hand while birds of prey scan the lake for fresh catch.

Today, in St. Albert, Alberta, they’re poisoning the ponds with rotenone. Public works will scoop the dead with tiny nets into buckets. The official statement reads: Any future regretful owners are to return their pets to the point of sale, or else kill and bury them. Fine if the past won’t take me back. But I want to live.