Free Bird
Photo by Lara Boyle
The cage is opened, and all at once a pelican emerges from the back of a pickup truck parked on Wrightsville Beach. The sun may shine now in March, a chill still in the air, but it has been a long winter in captivity for the bird, a slow unseen transition of rest and recovery, a time to pause, to heal from illness or injury, I can’t remember which one. My mother and I stop in our tracks as the creature flaps its wings toward freedom.
I imagine the moments between capture and release, those months spent staying still. That must have felt so alien. The shock of unexpected contact. Hands on wings that had never been human touched. The roar of an engine rather than ocean. The smell of gasoline, then disinfectant. Were there needles, tests run, veterinary office visits, medicine injected? Did being hand-fed make her miss how her heartbeat in a hunt for fish? When lights turn off inside an office, does a pelican think of sunsets? Does she see only what’s around her: Two legged animals with mouths instead of beaks that talk in sounds she can’t recognize, or does she think in absences: No more big sky, no more salt air, no more dolphins below?
“That’s you,” my mom says.
I don’t know what next season will bring, but I want to be the free bird. I want a loud spring. I want a sudden rush of light, the thrill of not knowing.
