I’m Seeing no Birds

I've noticed I'm seeing no birds, or not as many as I should see. That 's what got me thinking. That piece of scrap land has always been a problem, but this with the birds is something new.

Nothing in the papers of course, and that makes perfect sense. Most of the time they're making a scene about the environment, so why no fuss about the poor little birdies. If something's up with that land again, they're stopping us from finding out.

It's not like there's no history with it. Five years ago, some woman from here went missing inside it they say. She'd been seen sneaking with some man and then one night she's just gone, never heard from again. She's got to be in there buried. I mean, where else.

Front page news, of course, and the local paper promptly fingered her husband. Why are they allowed to do that? What happened to proof of guilt? Said he was drunk and abusive, but that's what you'd expect then to say. Left wing rag. Inventing a bunch of feminist claptrap but hey, the courts found him innocent, didn't they? So it couldn't have been him, could it? Must be some other explanation.

But they never kept looking, did they? Should have, you know. I guess their world view's not up to accepting he didn't do in his wife. The cops should have left the case open, kept on looking, found out what really happened. We pay their wages. They owe us that so why did they stop? Somebody tells them to stop, you think? You have to wonder, don't you?

And it isn't about the cost of investigation. It's not that big an area, maybe five hundred acres, and easy enough access. I get that it's really closed in, kind of creepy in fact, but there's something not right about the place. My dogs won't go anywhere near it, and you got to treat that with respect. Animals know when there's something off. They trust their instincts, not like us. And the place is full of coyotes, you know. You can hear them howling all night long. Gives me the creeps.

And plenty of other people feel the same. It even got into the National Enquirer. Front page. Yeah. They put the wrong name on the photograph but I could still recognize the place. They claimed it was haunted. Old Indian burial ground, they said, been a massacre sometime back. Bunch of garbage. No such thing as ghosts. Just because a place looks spooky, people start making stuff up. You got to stick with the fact.

It's about that refinery down on the coast. They've getting their feed stock from somewhere, aren't they, so there's pipelines all over the place. You can bet it's some old line been rusted out, been leaking for years. That's why the place is so overgrown. Trees and shrubs spring up like crazy, as if there's something supercharging the soil. Growth like that's not natural here. Explain that to me.

But here's the problem. If they'd started digging, really looking for that woman, they'd have soon found the line, and the guys who run the refinery wouldn't want that. They won't pay for fixing it. They won't pay for anything. Remember how they cheated me when I hurt my back, making me sue them for compensation.

And don't get me started on lawyers. Cost me a fortune to try the case and still get denied. And why am I surprised? I know all the local judges are in their pockets. Same with the council, and the police. It's cheaper for them to give out bribes than bother to fix any lines.. Who cares if it's killing some birds.