Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

What do I hear when I go outside? Well, that all depends on the time of day.

If I go outside at the crack of dawn, I hear a cacophony of birdsong. As you can see from the picture, there’s a large field behind the building where I live with lots of trees. Those trees are home to a variety of birds and first thing in the mornings they all have something to say. I sometimes wonder what they are twittering about. They could be discussing the dreams they had, debating what to have for breakfast, or simply making plans for the day.

A little further down in the picture you’ll see a pond. This pond is home to a number of ducks and geese. They too are quite the conversationalists. They can be heard when they’re coming in for landing as if the leader is giving instructions. Once on the ground, it often sounds like he’s giving feedback.

With them too I have no idea what they’re saying, but it sounds like every now and then these ducks and geese dissolve in peals of laughter.

Then there are the trains. Every 5 minutes during peak hours and every 10 minutes during the rest of the day, the SRT (Scarborough Rapid Transit) train passes by. 

Contrary to what you might think, the passing trains don’t bother me at all. In fact, I’m so used to them, I don’t hear them at all.

To GO-train, on the other hand, can't be missed. That train can be heard from quite a distance away and when it thunders past, anybody and everybody knows about it.

Micky loves that train. When he hears the train coming he rushes outside and sits on the ledge, or he jumps on a windowsill to watch the big green machine go by.

Other than that, there are all kinds of noises during the day. Cars coming and going, with quiet or not so quiet passengers.

In the distance, cars can be heard, along with the wail of ambulances or firetrucks. And every so often there is a loud bang. These bangs can be a car backfiring, an electric transformer blowing (as there is a power station nearby), or a gunshot. Who knows.

Late at night, when all should be quiet, a group of youngsters uses the parking lot behind the building as their personal playground. One car after another park in a dark corner and what happens next depends on that particular evening. Sometimes they play music, loud music, talk, and laugh.

Other nights they drink, and the more they drink, the louder they get. When they’re done, they smash the bottles leaving the glass and other debris behind. In the course of the evening, more cars come and go. It’s hard to see what goes on, but sometimes packages get exchanged.

Usually, after 2:00 a.m. all goes quiet.

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I'm leaving

Fall has arrived. Yes, I know, officially fall arrived on September 21^st but on that day, and the days that followed, Toronto enjoyed a bright sun in a blue sky and a temperature warm enough to be outside in shirt sleeves.

Today all that has changed. The sun is nowhere to be seen, the sky is a mass of grey clouds, and it’s cold. To make matters worse, it’s raining, and rain always makes a day seem even colder.

Ordinarily, I love a rainy day, the harder it rains the better I feel. I get really creative or I curl up on the sofa with a good book, with tea and chocolates within reach.

When I have to go out I don’t like a rainy day quite as much. I have to put on a jacket and instead of sunglasses take an umbrella along. Not that an umbrella guarantees me staying dry, I’ve had more than one umbrella ruined when the wind blew it inside out.

Some might say that fall is beautiful, and I agree. The Don Valley in Toronto displays a magnificent array of colors, but for how long. Soon those yellow, orange and red leaves fall off the trees and then they lay on the ground, rotting away. Except for chrysanthemums flowers are dying and nature loses all its color.

And from here on it’s only going to get worse. If meteorologists are to be believed, we’re having a tough winter ahead of us. We’ve had a wonderful long hot summer, so they are predicting an awful long and cold winter. Ugh, I can just imagine, temperatures way below zero, snow up to our ears, black ice … well, it is Canada.

If Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, to me this is the most miserable time of the year. Fall has only just started and I’ve already had enough of it.

In winter, with packs of snow, nature at least gets transformed into a magical landscape and there’s some fun to be had. Skiing, ice skating, throwing snowballs at each other, but what’s to be done in the fall … throwing wet leaves at each other?

Maybe I should do like the Canadian geese, head south and wait for winter to pass. I can’t fly, but I can walk.

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The Bitch

I do not consider myself a violent person, but today I would have happily grabbed someone by the scruff of her neck, dragged her outside and thrown her a beating she would have remembered for the rest of her life.

Remember the protest badge:

This is not a Canada Goose jacket

For I am not an animal killer

Say no to fur

I met a women today who was reading the badge and when she was finished shrugged a made a face.
“Don’t you agree?” I asked her.
“I don’t really care,” she stated.
“You don’t care that helpless animals get trapped and killed?” I said.
“No,” she said with a shrug.
“In that case I hope one day your leg gets stuck in a trap so you’ll feel what it’s like,” I said. 
“Not all animals get trapped,” she stated.  “Some are raised and killed for fur.”
My mouth fell open right down to my toes.
“You are in favor of fur?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said, “real fur is much better for the environment than fake fur.”

Better for the environment!
I had one hell of a job keeping my hands to myself, because all I wanted to do was smack that bitch into the middle of next week.
 

I wasn’t done with her though.
Once we were in the elevator I stated that I couldn’t wait for the day that animals turned the tables on humans and started hunting them for their skin.
“That will never happen,” the bitch stated.

Hm, that will never happen hu ...
When my grandmother first heard of the concept of voices coming out of a box, she said that that would never happen.  But it did happen and they called it a radio.
Later when someone stated that someone should add moving pictures to the voices, my grandmother once again said that that would never happen.  But it did happen and they called it a TV.

How many more things did people claim would never happen?  Did the inventors of the airplane ever foresee that their invention would carry over 500 people over the Atlantic ocean?  Did those who poured gunpowder in their muskets ever foresee a type of gun that could fire several hundred round per minute?  Did the inventor of the looking glass ever foresee that we would be able to see other galaxies?
Never be too sure about what the future might or might not hold.

I sincerely hope that the bitch, one way or another, gets a taste of her own medicine.  
Remember the movie ‘Powder’ with Johnny Depp in the title role?  When a hunter shot a deer, Johnny grabbed the hunter and placed his hand on the deer, making him feel what the deer was feeling. 
 

I wish I could do that to every hunter who hunts for fur and everyone who wears fur.  Make them feel the pain.

I wish the bitch will feel the pain one day, one way or another. 
Will I feel sorry for her?  What do you think?

Canada Goose jackets

About three months ago I noticed a colleague with a beautiful winter jacket. I asked her where she had bought this jacket and she stated it was very expensive. I thought this was a rather strange answer as I wasn’t interested in how much the jacket had cost, merely where she had bought it.
She stated it was a Canada Goose jacket and only select stores carried it.

Back home I did some research on the Net and found the Canada Goose website, where a little more research revealed that these jackets were made with real feathers of geese and the material around the hoot was real coyote fur.
Suddenly this beautiful jacket wasn’t so beautiful anymore. Real feathers and real fur ... had the Canada Goose company not heard of animal rights?
My admiration for the Canada Goose jacket was instantly dead. More so, I wouldn’t have wanted a jacket if the company gave me one for free.

From that moment on the sighting of those jackets really irritated me. They irritated me to the point that I wanted to grab the wearer of the jacket and point out that an animal had died for him to parade around in this jacket. I saw the jackets as a slap in the face of every animal lover and animal rights activist.

For weeks I brooded, wondering what I could do. Whenever I passed a Canada Goose jacket wearer I would accuse him of being an animal killer, but did the ‘killer’ hear me? I wanted to do something, but what?
Then one day it came to me ... labels, I would put labels on the sleeves and back of my jacket that stated:

This is not a Canada Goose jacket
For i am not an animal killer
Say ‘no’ to fur

Finally I had found my voice. The voice of protest. Wherever I saw the young fashion slaves flaunt their Canada Goose jacket, I would flaunt my badges.
The label was read and I got some wonderful responses. Colleagues and strangers came up to me, stating “Good for you” or “I didn’t know about this” or just giving me the thumbs up.

Then today I got the ultimate revenge.
I was in a full elevator where a woman read my badge and asked “Do they really use real fur?”
“They sure do,” I replied. “The Canada Goose company traps coyotes for their fur and slaughters thousands of geese for their feathers.”
Now it so happened that a young Chinese man stood in the center of the elevator wearing one of those Canada Goose jackets. So I made him a target.
“See that fur around the hood of his jacket?” I said. “That’s real coyote fur.”
Stone faced the guy stood staring at the elevator door, not looking left or right.
I guess at that moment he didn’t feel like flaunting his apparel. From the looks of it he wanted to shrink to the size of a leprechaun and disappear through the floor of the elevator. Can you imagine, some twelve people looking at you like you with accusing eyes of being an animal killer?
Upon reaching the ground floor he shot out of the elevator like an elastic and moved like he was on skates.
Ah, revenge is sweet.

You will have to admit though, in a time where PeTA activists have made huge progress in creating awareness for animal cruelty, animal rights and have created a stigma around wearing real fur, it is rather insensitive, if not downright stupid of the Canada Goose company to use real fur for their jackets.

Of course this had to happen in Canada. Not only does Canada have this black mark on their name because of their continued seal hunt, now they are killing geese and coyotes as well. What will be next?