Chat Thread: Tokyo Drift

A few years ago, when I was sofa-surfing after my first flat, I went to look at a flat above an old, boarded-up pub. It was probably scabby, and the guy showing me around literally said they were only trying to find tenants so the homeless would stop squatting. It was pretty unpleasant, with no locks on the doors of the room he was expecting me to rent, and we went into the bathroom to find the window smashed and a dead bird in the sink. It was horrible, I never went up to the top floor.

A colleague of mine did, though. I guess she was more desperate for a new place than I was, because she went up to the kitchen, where a big, brown stain on the floor marked the outline of a dead dog that hadn't been moved for some time.

I don't know what it is, but animal death is always sadder to me than human. All the girl's cried more at the dog's grave when we were looking at the WWI memorials.

Back when I lived in the city I lived in a nice little cul de sac atop a hill, and a family of magpies made it their permanent home.  Hearing them having singing sessions in the middle of the night in the back garden or front tree was not uncommon, and you could frequently see them hanging around during the day.  

They resided there all year round and were a permanent part of the place.  Me and the fam (okay, just the mother, mine is a small family lol) and the neighbours even had favourites, and we knew the magpies so well we could see their family dynamics.  We all even nicknamed their leader "wingtip" for this permanent feather that stuck up at an odd yet distinguished angle.  

Fastforward to two or so years of living there.  I'm heading down to the local shop five minutes walk away to grab some early morning groceries before catching the bus to school, when I hear some panicked terrified and very blatantly in pain cries.  I round the corner to the shop and see a pack of foreign magpies ganging up on and ripping the young kid of the local family to actual pieces.  It was a hoard of them and every time he tried to get away they chased and dragged him back down to continue savaging him.  

Words cannot describe how haunting the cries of that young magpie were, to this day it's one of my worst memories in life.  The fear, the pain, the bewilderment, all were clear in its cries.  Eventually it managed to get away over the street past a block of houses, still pursued.  The last time I ever saw it was when it was again being dragged down behind a house.  Neither I nor anyone I know ever saw it again.


For the next month or so the magpie family was constantly calling out, their tenor had changed completely and it was clear they were wondering where their child had got off to.  And I know damn well what happened to it.  It had been mobbed and very likely brutally killed.  And I didn't manage to do a single damn thing to help.  

If that sounds like a remarkably vivid memory it's because it haunts me to this day.  I'll take a deceased animal over that nightmare any day of the week.  A decade later and I can still remember it, remember how I felt that exact moment, what I was doing, and I hate myself for not trying harder to intervene.  I was scared to get in the middle of the group, but surely I could have bundled it up in my jacked and run for the shop which was only across the street.  I should have done something, anything besides that half frozen jog while my mind seized up unable to get over the fear of diving in.