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birdmad
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You are on a small street in a residential area surrounded by industrial fixtures. You are facing north toward the homes. About 60 feet behind you is a busy city street bustling largely with the traffic of 18-wheelers. The sun is high and blazing in the sky.
directly behind you is a vacant lot bordered by chain-link fencing on three sides, a bare concrete foundation rests near the southwest corner of the lot, there is an assortment of used tires inexplicably stacked into neat little columns,
at your left, along the north south outlet road through the neighborhood you see a series of warehouses, some busy and some vacant, the rumble of diesel engines is a fairly consistent murmur blending in with the traffic noises,
Actually you are standing at the north edge of the vacant lot, near the corner of this street you see the last three houses on the west end of the street.
the westernmost house is painted an odd shade of blue and seems to have all sorts of mechanical debris arrayed in the front yard, and has a small-scale version of a junkyard fenced in adjacent to its west side, you remember birdmad occasionally making cracks about this house and realize that this is one of the neighbors, it is a jeff foxworthy joke come to absurdly vivid life.
You realise that the modest and rather spare home next to it is the place where the bird lives, but you don't see the door to his apartment from the street yet.
Looking both ways from the edge of the vacant lot before you cross the street, you look to your right, and a few yards down the way you see another old joke come to life: there are chickens crossing the road,
behind you is a rustle of plastic bags as a small, dark skinned woman in late middle age and her toddler grandson come walking through the side gate of the lot from the corner store and are headed east.
"Buenos dias." the woman smiles at you as he goes on her way.
"Hiii!" the little boy holding her hand giggles as she leads him back home
you ponder for a moment.
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020517
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