Last September, before the Dodgers’ most recent disappointing postseason performance, my fiancé Marco got some cheapo tickets so we could go see his San Diego Padres while they were in town. This was exactly the reason we moved to LA. From our secluded mountain sanctuary in North Carolina, we hankered for easier access to cultural amenities. Now, we had a world-class city steps from our front door and we eagerly ate from the buffet of experiences that were a simple walk or bike ride away.
In fact, it was Marco’s idea to ride bikes from our place in Hollywood to Dodger Stadium. We could fly by the logjam parking lines and skip the uber surge pricing, plus, he insisted, it would be fun.
On Game Day, I woke up anxious and set to bargaining. I was more than happy to cover the cost of parking or a ride, I said, intent on saving us from being clipped by a Tesla driver who chose going 40 on Sunset as the ideal time to fix her lashes in the rearview and failing to even noticing us flying headlong into traffic or the dumpsters of a trendy ramen spot. But he insisted, and I acquiesced, admitting that it might, if nothing else, make for a good story.
It was a 5.4 mile trip each way. I spent a good hour checking the terrain and concentration of homeless encampments before settling on the most direct route. We would take Franklin Blvd from our house until it hit Vermont in Los Feliz, and ride that down to where Hollywood turns into Sunset and stay there until Vin Scully Ave at the base of the small mountain that holds the stadium.
The bike route on Franklin is no different than any other congested traffic lane, but every hundred yards or so the image of a cyclist has been spray-painted onto the concrete, bestowing the lane with mystical properties that keep cars and bikes safely separated. Like a force field. In a city like LA where dreams come true, magical spray paint wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Still, I puttered awkwardly along the sidewalk for the first mile or so, dismounting and walking my bike around every pedestrian with an apology that acknowledged my role as a cowardly trespasser on the sidewalk that was rightfully theirs. It was slow going.
Until a mile and a half in, when the fun began. I finally took to the street where Franklin widens in a chic residential neighborhood in Los Feliz. Aging mansions (and the John Sowden house) on our left looked down over palm-lined parallel streets of eclectic apartments on our right. I was admiring the houses and watching for errant cars when something in the sky grabbed my attention. At first, it seemed as though a pile of fallen leaves had coalesced into a solid form. Or a brown dumpster bag had taken flight and was descending upon us with rustling velocity.
My eyes adjusted and saw the UFO for what it was, a thrashing ball of flapping wings and tearing claws that spun in erratic circles toward the pavement. My next unthinking thought was of biblical angels, and how they were supposed to be terrifying when gazed upon by mortal eyes. I remembered my Asheville friends who had gasped when they heard we were moving to LA, and how I told them if the apocalypse was coming, I wanted a front-row seat.
We brought our bikes to a halt at a wide intersection and watched the feral divine fall from the sky, leaving a trail of feathers. The truth: two birds of prey - hawks or maybe falcons - were spinning out of the sky in a violent embrace of either lust or war. They slammed into the concrete in the eastbound lane and continued their susurration of anguish and flapping wings.
A man wearing a ball cap low over his eyes sauntered up to watch the writhing two-headed beast grapple with the new condition of groundedness. A small crowd had gathered. Wings flapped. Claws clung in a traffic-stopping display of instinct.
A woman screamed from a passing car and made a screeching left turn. She left her car double-parked and ran toward us holding a coat hanger above her head.
“Help them! We have to help them!” she yelled, holding the hanger out to me.
“Help them do what?”
“They’re fighting!”
“Are they?”
I exchanged a glance with the walker, who seemed just as uninterested in approaching the sharp spectacle of animal instinct as I was.
“They could be fighting. Or they could be doing something else,” he smirked.
Hanger lady stared at us. She blinked, bewildered, and walked away, her one-woman campaign to end bird-on-bird violence ending as abruptly as it began.
She continued down Winona to avoid the traffic that had accumulated on Franklin. Cars stopped and swerved to avoid the feathery traffic hazard. A woman traveling west told her Uber driver to stop in the center lane. She held up her phone and yelled at me.
“Did you call someone already?”
“Like who?” I didn’t know any bird therapists.
She glared and pressed her iPhone righteously against her ear.
The brawl was coming to some sort of resolution anyway. One bird was winning. It had the other pinned against the road and raised its wings skyward in triumph. Their claws were interlocked and their wings continued to flap in flightless outbursts, but slower now.
We knew it was over when we heard an engine accelerating over the rise. The driver of a grey Mazda SUV never saw it. Maybe it was the angle of the sunset in his rearview mirror. Maybe they were looking for their next podcast or texting their spouse to ask if they needed garlic from the store. Maybe they really hated birds. They never slowed. But we, who had gathered to watch, were invested. We watched in horror and our screams of HEY! caught in our chests as the Mazda sped over the birds and it was over.
I looked away because I couldn’t bear the sight of two beautiful predators being smashed to goo during the fight of their lives by some mid-tier crossover. I looked at Marco whose eyes never left the road. He was laughing. The way you laugh watching a kid play with a new toy or at two dogs joyfully meeting for the first time. The birds were ok. The Mazda chassis passed right over them. The shock of the near-miss had brought them back from primordial oblivion to this reality and the one who had been winning took flight immediately. The smaller one - the weaker, maybe, or just the female - lingered for a moment before shaking it off, taking a running start, and lifting off toward the east. Toward Dodger Stadium. With a laugh and acknowledging looks to the small crowd that had gathered, we followed.
The ride down Sunset was like a bad Mario Kart level, careening in a non-existent lane between parked and speeding cars. Every time a car zoomed past, I said a prayer and tried to make myself smaller, hoping no one opened the door of their parked car at the perfect moment to clothesline me. We passed bar after trendy bar with laughter echoing from bustling patios, and a cavalry of RVs with flat tires and long-expired registration.
By the time we made it to the bottom of the small mountain on top of which Dodger Stadium sits, the sky was a shimmery lilac, and my endorphins were pumping. The last stretch, past the lines of cars waiting to park, was up that hill, and we huffed and puffed past them to the bike rack near Gate A. Our fallen angels turned out to be fighting (or fornicating) birds of prey, but we still got our divine message that night. And the Padres won 6-1.
That is a wild story.