Were the lights green? Or was it red? I wasn’t sure.

What I was watching was the black bird standing nonchalantly in the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare in Mountain View. Cars speed through here quickly, wanting to return to the office in Silicon Valley. But here was the black bird trying to grasp a small boject in its beak. Then it flapped its wings and flew upward to the traffic light, perching on the pole.

By some fat, the object dropped out of its beak. Without pause, the bird swooped down and found it again. Pecking at the ground until it had the object solidly in its beak. I was quite certain that the light was green and all the speeding cars would not see it. And this is how another animal ends up dead on the road.

The sun is setting behind the luxury apartments, and I watched the black bird from the office window, my seat now pushed to the edge since my desk was taken from me. But then the bird lifted upward. To another traffic light pole, where it jumped up to the peak of the traffic light as the top light, the red one, was lit. Its beak moved almost violently and quieted. The object was within the body know. It sat there for several minutes longer, gazing at the intersection. And then I looked downward to my computer and it was no longer there any more.