Outside My Window

It was afternoon the day I heard that...sound...coming from somewhere outside my window. We live on the fifth floor of an apartment complex, so that kind of clued me in that it was something with wings. Even the sound itself sounded like the call of some flying thing...but only because I had seen shows like "The Land That Time Forgot" and "Jurassic Park." It didn't particularly concern me that there might be a flock of pteradactyls coasting above the parking lot. That sort of worry has lost its power over me. A herd of elephants could suddenly appear on the street and I would probably not spend too much time thinking about it at this point. But, as no deadline was looming over my computer at that moment, I thought it might be nice to see the strange beasts that were looming just beyond the balcony.

I did experience a momentary excitement that J.K. Rowling's Romanian Ridgebacks, a breed of dragon that appears in the Harry Potter series, might have found their way into the city.

But alas, they were only doves.

Now, their utterances were somewhere between "pteradactyl" and "crow with a pack-a-day Marlboro habit." But the creatures I saw perched in the tree were pretty, dainty little things. They resembled mourning doves, except that their feathers had a sort of lavender tinge and Nature has provided them with little black chokers around their necks. Romanian doves are beautiful birds, but experiencing them up close for the first time is a lot like seeing what I used to call The Pepsi Girl Commercial. You know The Pepsi Girl -- cute little kid who bellies up to the bar and orders a Pepsi, in a baritone voice. For those of us who have seen "The Exorcist," that is the creepiest thing in the known universe.

I don't know if I would call these doves creepy, even if they don't coo. Maybe they do have a smoking habit. It wouldn't be surprising. Everyone in Bucharest smokes. They do make me think of home, though, and in a very strange way. I lived for a number of years near Lake Olmstead and the crows there don't caw. They quack. Crows are mimickers and their constant exposure to ducks has made them bilingual. Maybe that's what's up with the Romanian doves. They're trying to speak to me in American Crow. Or maybe they're practicing their Olde Pteradactyl. Either way, I'm starting to feel a bit inadequate.

I do speak fluent Cat, though, so that ought to count for something.