The Warehouse

Birds dream. When a young bird is learning to sing, it uses the song of an adult bird as a template. These songs are absorbed, and when the younger bird sleeps, it dreams of them. The auditory information it was exposed to during the day is reactivated and replayed and rehearsed. It is a way of learning. The song birds dream of singing to perfect their melodies.

Noah does not know what brown pelicans dream of. He stands in a warehouse, a cleaning facility where hundreds of oil-slicked pelicans are quietly sleeping. They are larger than he expected. Their beaks are the length of his forearm. They are quiet and inert, a black grouping of question marks, sick and huddled together for warmth.

Days ago, a batch of 62 pelicans was released into a wildlife refuge in Texas. They were cleaned with hoses, soaked with vegetable oil, shampooed gently with dish soap, and fed charcoal tablets in an effort to damper the absorption of ingested oil. They were then flown via coast guard and released into the air.

Noah believes they should be euthanized, that human efforts only prolong their suffering. Yet he helps with the efforts alongside his girlfriend, Vita, who believes that humans have a responsibility to keep them alive for as long as possible. He's watching her and two others run a shower massager through a bird's feathers. She steps away from the washtub for a minute, removes her yellow kitchen gloves and begins to cry. After a few minutes, she regains composure and blankly stares at the rows of wooden crates for a moment before returning to the tub. She is tired.

A representative from the dish soap company is visiting. A few of Noah's colleagues are showing him the cleaned pelicans, and the man seems genuinely surprised at how well they have been cleansed and nursed. His company is donating thousands of bottles of dish soap to help with the cleaning.

Noah thinks about the ordeal from a pelican's perspective. A pelican dives into the water, and when it emerges, its feathers fail and coldness seeps through. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, but as the bird moves about and attempts to take flight again, it flips over. It's wings drag along the water like the soaked wings of a paper airplane. Each movement brings about a confusing result. Still, the pelican is not alarmed. It struggles to stay afloat, unaware of it's plight. There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, only this momentary disruption. It sits in a completely passive state. Water begins to seep in under its feathers and it begins to shiver. Its body temperature drops. After a while, it sees figures approaching on a boat. It kicks and flaps its wings feebly. It is picked up and handled, at the mercy of something it cannot fathom. Its beak is opened then closed, its feathers are scrubbed, it is left to shiver in the cold, and then it is held in a pen to recover. It sleeps. It dreams. It dies.

Thousands of birds have died in captivity. More will die after being seemingly rehabilitated. The birds will succumb to the toxins already in their bodies. They will be flown far away, released from their cages – those past events still a mystery – and they will die from the stress and trauma of being handled and held in wooden crates for days on end. At least that is how Noah sees it. Vita is compassionate and hopeful about their recovery. He can see the tenderness in her eyes when she is rinsing the oil from their wings.

The man from Proctor and Gamble shakes the hands of the volunteer workers. He shakes his head in sympathy and promises more aid. They all wave goodbye as they leave the warehouse.

There are 65 more boxes filled with pelicans. Their heads are folded against their necks like black hairpins. It costs $15,000 to clean a single bird. The company will donate 7,000 more bottles of dish soap. There are more birds found daily.

Vita walks over to Noah. "Wanna take a break?" she asks.

"What do you think they dream of, these birds?" Noah asks her.

Vita removes her gloves and throws them into a sink basin. "They dream of you, with a scoop net, standing on the bow of a motorboat," she pauses for a moment, then adds "Naked."

"Just one more reason for them to live," Noah says.

"You're a thing of beauty, a moral being," quips Vita.

They exit the warehouse and a warm breeze blows over them. Vita's hair is suddenly dazzled to life, and it flows with the air. Noah stops walking and lights a cigarette. He looks back at the warehouse, at the sun setting behind its stark silhouette, and the dim figures moving about in the dark. The lights within the warehouse flicker on. Volunteers are working tirelessly. Suddenly Noah feels unstable and homicidal toward the birds. He feels the urge to burn the warehouse to the ground. He wants to put those hundreds of huddled waterfowl out of their collective misery. It happens often. As he cleans an individual – its head hanging weakly, its neck limp like a wet rope – he feels an urge to end its life as an act of mercy. It is a symptom of stress and fatigue – his mind going dark. "I don't think I can do this anymore," he says to Vita.

As the sun sets on them. "If you quit, you're quitting us," she says.

"You know how I feel about this. It's with the same kind of compassion you feel. I just don't believe that this is the right solution. It's just something we do because that's what feels right. But just because it feels right doesn't make it so," he says.

Vita takes the cigarette from Noah's lips and inhales deeply. "But we do it anyway," she says, and returns the cigarette. She takes a long, searching look into his eyes, her eyes shifting left to right, her brow slightly pinched, then puts her hand on his shoulder. "See you around," she says and walks off.

Whatever birds dream of, it doesn't involve us. They fly, they eat, they sleep and they perfect their songs, although they never for a moment wonder if their songs are flawed. If we touch them, we ruin them. If we introduce them to nightmares, there is no saving them. At least that is how Noah sees it.