by Luca Rosner
“Black death, what do you mean?”, the turtle finally breaks her silence.
Obviously, she interrupted the irritated swallow, who, however, took up the question without being disturbed: “Child, have you never met southern right whales? Have you never swum with humpback, sperm, blue and beaked whales?”
“Oh yeah, I think I met a beaked whale!”, she interrupts the renewed torrent of talk, “he was talking about family-killing metal claws. Is that the black death? Or much easily extreme sound waves? Or stranding?”
“Oh no, no, no!”, the bird rolls its eyes, theatrically annoyed by the chatter of its counterpart, “but you’ve certainly seen sea lions before. At least killer whales, great white sharks, southern bluefin tunas? Doesn’t ring a bell, does it!?
Doesn’t matter anyway.
The black death is especially dangerous for us feather bearers. Smear in dark color that covers the surface of the sea. Once you come into contact with it, you can’t get rid of this sticky stuff that alters your feathers.
If you don’t freeze to death, you will die because of your inability to fly or sink and drown. If, on the other hand, you desperately try to clean yourself, you swallow all the poison, and that is your death sentence. In short, the black death kills you. Well, maybe not you. But it will kill me. Even a little drop is enough.
Same with our feeding and nesting grounds. You can’t escape from contaminated areas fast enough, I tell you! That’s the biggest joke. People are drilling for this stuff right in our territories and additionally destroying our home. But then again, they can’t do without us. Then they go back to their funny streets and complain to each other about our disappearance.”
“You seem to know a lot about these people”, the reptile replies with familiar skepticism.
“Logo, you must know who you’re pooping on!”, the bird chirps.
Together they move a little further, to a terribly real, unreal place.
© Luca Rosner 2022-10-28