Читать Bird - Julius Chance

“Birds of prey do not sing” (German proverb)

His glance slid to the dumpster where a seagull the size of a pig was sitting. What?! Antony turned his eyes back and froze… Two hemispheres were fighting in his head. The right exclaimed that such a thing could not be possible, and the left insisted that he should believe his eyes. For a couple of minutes he stared at the giant gull as it heavily stepped from paw to paw along the edge of the garbage can, which swayed under its weight. Then Antony smoothly pulled out his smartphone and took a picture of the miracle. As he continued to stare, he reasoned that, as a university-educated man, he probably should have been aware of the existence of such superbugs. But he has not been. By using various logical reasoning, he concluded that he was just lucky enough to be the first to come across a hitherto unseen mutant. The appearance of which could be result from a radiation or gene pollution of the environment. For instance, as a result of leaks in the accident at the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima. From there, he could have flown here to San Francisco. Why not? Such considerations led Antony to delight and he decided to urgently attract the attention of other people to his discovery, before it flew across the ocean. After all, it could well be in a single copy! He slowly turned his head from side to side, trying not to scare away the object of science – no one at this early hour! What a bad luck! Antony froze like a mannequin and waited. Ten minutes later, he noticed the shaking figure of a man on a morning jog in the depths of the park. It was getting closer. Soon he saw a middle-aged man in a faded T-shirt and shorts. He was running towards here! Antony smiled in anticipation of how now this uncle will stumble out of the blue, seeing such a ‘pterodactyl’. The runner caught up with the trash can and… ran past it. Didn't you notice? Antony wanted to shout to him, but refrained and prepared to wait for someone else. Soon, a college-looking guy in his twenties, wearing jeans and eating a McDonald's hamburger popped up nearby. He crumpled the bag and threw it into the tank, almost hitting the scientific discovery. The miracle fearlessly turned his head away from the flying ball, and the student walked on past it… But this time this guy could not notice!