~ distressed plasticene hood ornament

~ The Gully of The Zipper Crab

An intrepid researcher dares The Gully of the Zipper Crab, only to be methodically eviscerated by an entity only one man - subsequently driven insane by the effort - has lived to describe. Suffice to say, the abomination which dwells in this barren gully - nursing its profound and bitter hostility over the long centuries, writhing idly in a noisome slime-pond of its own excretions - is possessed of a loathsomeness none are advised to confront.

~ the scattering of the dead

Because the seasons are changing, so do the habits of the birds. With Spring, they are more obvious about the place, flirting, fluttering, dive-bombing... and, doubtless, it is this flurry that leads so many to their doom.

For a few years now, there has been a pair of crested pigeons living a few doors down from me on the edge of a park. They are always together when I see them. When I pass, they boost themselves skywards with an unmistakeable alarm call - a rapid mechanical whooping that originates, not from their throats, but from the passage of air through an adapted feather. They are funny birds, even comical. They strut about in search of seeds with expanded chests, bold orange eyes, and what look like circa WW1 German army helmets on their tiny heads (according to Robert).

Polly found one of them in the gutter the other day. It's hard to describe the aching sadness one feels at these widowings in the natural world. I feel for the surviving pigeon especially, I can't help it, I feel its grief, its dumb animal longing and the horror of Nature's indifference...

And then a dead brown thornbill appeared on the driveway. A tiny bird, always busy in the high branches, smaller than a sparrow and dull of plumage, but possessed of a wonderful vocabulary of trills, whirrs, cheeps, chirps and chitters that is an absolute delectation to the ear.

And there were others... among them the creature below:

This luckless red-browed finch met its doom in the grille of a Mercedes owned by my friend Querulous.

*

I was expecting Saturday's reading of Ambergris to leave me worried and despondent, but instead I'm feeling pleasurably neutral. It wasn't hideously long, as I'd feared. My experiment in the complex entwining of multiple plots left no one bemused. And it really seemed to work pretty much as I'd imagined it would. That's good. That means I'm keeping a functional link open to the minds of other people. I would have liked to have watched it rather than been in it, but there's a recording I can access (thanks Bruce) and, besides, thankfully, I don't think there's a hell of a lot I have to do except embark upon the next stage.

Thank you Lynne and La Mama and all who read, particularly Anthea, who was given the hardest job and proved herself an absolute trooper.