The Bird Cleaner

Except for Sundays, Jason Hawkins drove his diesel Dodge Ram emblazoned with his company logo, ABC DISPOSAL, scouring every neighborhood in the Salt Lake Valley. ABC, at the top of the alphabet, stood for Acme Bird Cleaner, or as Hawkins liked to joke, Assorted Bird Corpses, and Hawkins was hustling to snatch up as many dead birds as possible. Each bird brought him $9.00 if it was clean. If it was diseased, the bird fetched $15.00. His list of clients was growing and his new wife loved it that his perseverance was bringing welcome financial relief, paying down their debts.

The first stop was Piccadilly and Curl’s, a quaint, old-fashioned barbershop that did its best to keep its parking lot clean after recent upgrades to laser, wind, and solar tech. The adverse effects of these newfangled technologies resulted in more and more birds killed weekly. The numbers continued to climb, especially after local zoologists bred and released more birds to counteract their otherwise declining numbers. Yet, the recent Bird Flu in the east worried many. Quarantine suspicions grew, as did Jason’s wallet.

His watch rang. His wife’s concerned face was there and she said, “Jason, Aunt Jill called.”

Aunt Jill was the receptionist at a chiropractic office. His wife didn’t like to talk about work, so clearly the call was important.

“They need a bird cleaner. Today,” she said. “Aren’t you heading to Millcreek this afternoon?”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll fit them in. You told them our prices?”

“Yep. Sixty dollars a week, and that you dispose of the birds free!”

“I hope my clients never find out I sell the dead birds to Designer Corp to reuse. I’ve started to see some reanimated birds.”

“How can you tell? Don’t they all look the same?”

“They have a different shine to them. Almost like an oily sheen. Greasy in certain angles of light. They also feel different. Like paper that’s been recycled too much. They feel rich.”

“I think the word is oleaginous.”

“My thesaurus wife with the English degree! Is that big belly going to get the smarts from you, too?”

Jason Hawkins, Bird Cleaner, got out of the truck at Piccadilly and Curl’s and grabbed a shovel and five-gallon paint bucket. Anticipating the imminent arrival of their first child, he worked quickly. Every dollar of extra income would not only offset their debts, but would also help pay for the baby’s delivery.

“Honey, I’ve got to get to work. Love you!”

“Love you, too!”

Jason scooped up eleven birds at Piccadilly’s and Curls. One reanimated, two diseased, the rest clean. The usual gulls, jays, magpies. There was even one hummingbird. He was still awaiting a deal on reanimated birds, which were of an indiscriminately mixed species.

Driving from appointment to appointment could get boring. Yes, there was a constant playlist of music to listen to, but when even that got old, he had switched to podcasts. Though the flood of entertainment had its ups and downs, his inspiration for the business had grown out of that sea of free information. His self-appropriated learning and his burgeoning experience helped him grow his YouTube and Instagram pages as the leading voice in the Bird Cleaning Industry—an industry that a couple of years ago no one had thought of.

Hawkins, wearing his hazardous material suit, arrived at Aunt Jill’s chiropractic office in the afternoon. It was clearly in desperate need of a bird cleaner. Dozens lay in the parking lot underneath wind turbines, several on grass with cut-off parts from the laser mowing service, and several fried from the solar tech attached to the roof and sides of their building.

The chiropractor, dressed in an untucked Hawaiian shirt and short khakis, approached Hawkins as he attached his face mask. He didn’t actually need it since he had the shovel and gloves and washed himself routinely. However, the COVID-19 pandemic a few years before taught him that the mere perception of cleanliness was a prudent business practice.

“You here for the birds?” asked the chiropractor.

“Yeah, I’m the bird cleaner.”

“Good, I can’t risk any of my patients getting sick from these things. And with the tax write-offs I might as well do all the environmental tech stuff. Who wouldn’t? It’s a good deal.”

Hawkins nodded his head since the man couldn’t see his cheek muscles hook his smile into a falsified grin of agreement behind his face mask. He got to work and shoveled up dead birds. It was almost the end of the day and he still had to drive to Designer Corp Labs in West Valley City to drop off his collection. Before arriving there, he stopped for a restroom and snack break at a local Maverick Gas Station, where he organized the birds between clean, diseased, and reanimated.

The laboratory’s campus was surrounded with a ten-foot brick wall with razor wire and glass on top. The secrets the lab held rivaled Willy Wonka’s or Apple’s. Security scanned the tag stickered inside his front windshield. He headed for building #26A—Birds.

Hawkins parked outside the loading dock and the bay door lifted open. Per routine, the lab operator, Hedge, was there to greet him. Like Hawkins, Hedge was dressed in a hazmat suit and facemask.

“If it isn’t Mr. Hawkins, our favorite bird cleaner! What do you have today?”

Hawkins, exiting his Dodge, responded, “thirty-five clean, thirteen diseased, and three reanimated.”

“Not a bad haul, Hawkins.” Hedge began to collect them in the lab’s hermetically sealed plastic containers.

“Hey, Hedge, I need to talk about money. I’m hearing from zoologists I can get the same fee, plus a tax write-off, if I go to the government, since they release the bred birds into the valley. Also, we haven’t agreed on rates for reanimated birds yet. I want $20.00 for reanimated.”

Hedge tightened his shoulders. “You don’t negotiate Designer Corp rates with me. I have no say. You know that.”

“I beg to differ. People learn about the trade from me, so you know very well that if I ditched Designer Corp and I posted it on social media, you’d lose a good seventy percent of your bird business. Look Hedge, we aren’t friends. This is purely business. I don’t really care for Designer Corp, and I know all about the whole Designer Baby project. I have a kid on the way that we did the natural way. So I think it would be in your interest to pay me a little of your tainted money.

Hedge pulled out his phone and typed into an app.

“Okay, it’s done. You’ve got a deal. Let’s take those damn birds off your hands!” said Hedge, with the same smile Jason didn’t have to expose behind his own face mask.

Stephen Hughes is a freelance percussionist in Utah who has written stories since he was four years old. Please consider purchasing this story in the collection "Getting Through: Tales of Corona and Community" on Amazon. All proceeds will go to the American Red Cross. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Through-Tales-Corona-Community/dp/B086PLNMYB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=getting+through%3A+tales+of+corona+and+community&qid=1586439943&sr=8-1