By Jennie Englund
It was the thaw of Tahoe’s second-snowiest winter—April 2023—when a yellow-eyed blackbird whistled out to me. I was walking toward the lake through an otherwise empty parking lot near Fanny Bridge when I looked where the whistle came from. The bird was perched on a curb by Plumas Bank.
“What are you doing here, like this?” I asked, as she hopped off the curb and along beside me.
The sun was out, the sky wide and blue.
This bird should be chirping from treetops, I thought. It should be tweeting to other birds, not loitering in a lot.
The bird bounced toward me across a mound of black snow, her tawny feet weaving between vape cartridges, bits of foil, a beer can.
I had never seen trash like this in Tahoe City. Even the dirt was dirty.
And what was the deal with this bird?
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” I asked, as the bird’s legs spun to keep up. “You should be pecking beetles from bark or something.”
“Have you had beetle?” Bird’s voice was surprisingly gravelly, rough, no match to her initial whistle. “First the crunch. Then the mushy part.” Bird shuddered. “Terrible aftertaste. Muddy.”
While I was thinking that did make some sense, Bird went on, “And the work— the pecking thing? Wildly time-consuming. Inefficient.” Her wing lifted, shifting her feathers. “I’d rather hang out and wait for someone to give me something.”
“I don’t really have anything,” I told Bird, aware that the ‘someone’ she was talking about was me. “All I’ve got is a water bottle and a string cheese.”
“What kind?”
“What kind?” I stopped by a murky puddle of bottle caps.
Bird stopped too. “What kind. Of cheese?”
“Uh. Mozzarella.”
“They’re all mozzarella.” Bird’s eyes rolled. “What brand?”
“Frigo?” I was guessing, but it was probably Frigo.
“The cheese works.” Bird said.
“Yeah. I don’t think it works for me, though,” I said. “Birds don’t eat dairy. You can’t digest it.”
“Used to be,” Bird said. “But it’s different now. Now, we can eat anything.”
“Not anything, though.” (Me). “Not coffee or chocolate or margaritas.”
“Used to be,” Bird repeated. “But that stuff’s okay now. We’ve adapted.”
‘Adapted?’ What was happening? Where was I? Where was the lake?
“Which way is the lake?” I asked Bird.
“What lake?” she blinked.
“The lake,” I repeated.
“That doesn’t track.” Bird cocked her head.
I was not the crazy one. “Tahoe!” I spat. “It was right here! Right where the Truckee flowed out of it. By this bridge!” I pointed.
“I feel like you dropped the string cheese thread,” Bird said. “So, how about it— the Frigo?”
That was it.
I turned my back on the bird. Striding quick and long to outpace her if she followed, I hurried to my car. I jumped in and shut the door.
From the window, I glanced back at the parking lot.
The bird had returned to the curb where I’d met her.
Unruffled, she waited for the next human to come along.
Jennie Englund grew up swimming and fishing in Tahoe. She is a two-time National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, a Harvard Global Studies scholar, and Vashon Residency alum. The award-winning author of Taylor Before and After, her upcoming memoir Sap-Souled: A Personal History on Lake Tahoe, is forthcoming.