The Dream of the Starving Birds — Summary

After long delay I have entered the room of the starving birds. I bought a machine selling squirrels and placed it in my room with pigeons on porches (their gentle, multicolored wings!), little birds in cages asking to be fed, a great black raven, and, beyond my sight, another Larger bird. Then I chanced them; journeyed, left the room, but I worried, and soon I came back to feed them.

A sense of urgency has driven me to take my plate of omelet upstairs. Under my arm, a bag of bird feed. I feed the noisy ones, the little birds, first; then the pigeons who stay on their perches reaching fledgeling beaks. At first I feed them omelet with a fork. The raven crosses the room for omelet. I stuff the soft yellow down their bills and hope it will keep them alive. I glance at the machine. I am guilty of its rotting dead. But the Squirrels have turned also machine; sterile; tumbled over in their plastic boxes, their tails made of wire and copper sponge. I dread them,

The big bird stands behind me to my left, undefined, waiting to be found while I give the birds wild bird seed.