Mourning Doves

On my way back to work after lunch, I saw a mourning dove standing in the road. I slowed down a bit to give the bird time to fly off. But it didn't - it just stood there. We made eye contact as I drove around it, me turning my head as I passed and it turning its head to stare at me with first one eye, and then the other. It didn't make any effort to get out of the street, didn't flap its wings, didn't hop-hop back towards the curb - it just blinked at me with black shiny eyes. I looked in my rearview mirror to see if it moved after I passed, but instead I saw the car behind me crush it. Deliberately, it seemed to me - not only did the car not swerve to avoid the bird, but it appeared to steer towards it. Watching the dove disappear under the tires, and then seeing the clotting mass reappear behind the car, I was so angry that I had to turn at the next street so I didn’t have to see that guy in my mirror any longer.

I have a running argument/joke with my girlfriend about braking for birds. I do, sometimes abruptly, and she doesn't. She doesn't swerve towards them, but she doesn't slow down. It freaks me out, and I find myself stomping on the passenger side floorboards with my stomach knotted up. The birds always move, she says, laughing as I clutch the door handle. And mostly they do.

But here's the thing - we do not have a fundamentally greater right to be here than the birds do. We are not entitled to take up space that is already occupied by something else. The belief that we – as humans, as Americans - are somehow more deserving of space, of resources, of existance, is the root cause of so much turmoil and anguish in the world, so much suffering. I don’t understand the thought process; I don’t understand subscribing to such an arrogant philosophy. Yes, mostly the birds move, but we don’t have the right to expect it.

And so here I am at work, feeling the weight of what I witnessed – the cruelty, the selfishness. How do I coexist in a world that runs over the little things just because it can? What does it mean that the last image captured by the dove’s deep fluid eyes was me? What responsibility have I earned for being the last creature connection in its small precious life?