Congratulations Insanely Dangerous Bird!

When you awake from your slumber, just beneath the blasting zone for the foundation of a new Arby’s, you won’t feel rage. Not really rage, at least. Simply the dull throbbing that comes from eons of uneasy slumber. As your talons and blunted digging claws scrabble through the thick, ancient dirt surrounding you it will slowly turn to rage, however. You’ll recall moments in time: a flash of light, the rush of air, the darkness surrounding you, the puzzling sense of floating within a moment, a voice whispering to you: wait.

The time for waiting, however, is now past.

You’ll emerge from the earth just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, next to a well appointed neo Victorian home. Inside a family will be screaming, horrified at the trembling ground and at your visage as you burst forth from the ground: a raptor multiplied a thousand fold, tremendous in scale and potency, your mouth open, tongue lolling, feathers pointed outwards in a gesture of profound anger. In one sweeping gesture you’ll tear into the house, your digging claws hooking one of the family mid shriek, ending their cry and letting you pull them towards you on wingtip and begin eviscerating them with your beak.

It will be the first meat you’ve tasted since your entombment.

It will be delicious.

Once you finish your meal you’ll shake the spent husk of human from your wingtip and spread your span wide, letting loose a long, triumphant cry. Then you’ll begin running along the ground, feet tearing up chunks of concrete and lawn until you alight, balancing just so on the tides of wind that feel unfamiliar, wrong somehow, as hot air currents move in strange pockets over slats of blackened earth.

When you finally begin moving comfortably in the sky you’ll survey the new landscape, your eyes catching the sheer heat of it more than anything else. So much life will be teeming below, so much warmth and motion. So much prey, the coarsest sketch of a thought will emerge. So little time.

Congratulations Insanely Dangerous Bird!