Birds and Train Tracks
I walked from Sodo to downtown and took lots of pictures along the way. Sodo is part of the industrial district and is full of semi-trucks and the sounds of rattling and choo-chooing trains. Sodo is in a weird flux right now. I think Sodo will be a very different place in maybe even as short as five years. Right now, there is the familiar combination of the old and run down and the new and fancy.
Sodo in the afternoon is full of birds. Around one o'clock, a bunch of starlings come from somewhere and settle in the trees that line the streets. They chirp and chime merrily. Sometimes you can't even see the birds, you can just here the sound of birds echoing in the trees. But then something will startle them and they will all burst from their cocoon of leaves and branches and into the air where they swoop, separate and reconvene along the telephone lines or back in the trees.
There are crows in Sodo too. There are crows everywhere in Seattle. They've claimed this city. It is an empire for crows, it is their ideal city. They feast upon a perfect combination of urban debris and the treats and treasures of nature. In Sodo, they leave bones scattered along the sidewalks. I thought the bones were chicken bones at first. I imagined some resident or worker of the area walking down the streets, gnawing on pieces of chicken and throwing the bones behind him as he continued his walk. But once I saw a small, almost decayed mammal skull in the weeds and another time I saw a dainty spine. There's been bunny sightings in Sodo... a flash of a rabbit tail heading toward the train tracks... long ears poking up from a patch of dry and overgrown grass. There are probably sneakier rodents around too, but not so sneaky to evade capture by a hungry crow.
Sodo in the afternoon is full of birds. Around one o'clock, a bunch of starlings come from somewhere and settle in the trees that line the streets. They chirp and chime merrily. Sometimes you can't even see the birds, you can just here the sound of birds echoing in the trees. But then something will startle them and they will all burst from their cocoon of leaves and branches and into the air where they swoop, separate and reconvene along the telephone lines or back in the trees.
There are crows in Sodo too. There are crows everywhere in Seattle. They've claimed this city. It is an empire for crows, it is their ideal city. They feast upon a perfect combination of urban debris and the treats and treasures of nature. In Sodo, they leave bones scattered along the sidewalks. I thought the bones were chicken bones at first. I imagined some resident or worker of the area walking down the streets, gnawing on pieces of chicken and throwing the bones behind him as he continued his walk. But once I saw a small, almost decayed mammal skull in the weeds and another time I saw a dainty spine. There's been bunny sightings in Sodo... a flash of a rabbit tail heading toward the train tracks... long ears poking up from a patch of dry and overgrown grass. There are probably sneakier rodents around too, but not so sneaky to evade capture by a hungry crow.