Once they returned from a long trip and found dozens of dead birds. They flew in the chimney, and, after inspecting the house, none could remember how they’d come in. There was a gigantic picture window in the living room facing the front yard that my grandmother kept so clean  it could easily be confused with a hole in the wall. The birds lunged one at a time, likely repeatedly, until they’d all bludgeoned themselves to death. Judging by the decay they’d probably been dead for weeks when they were found.  Of the four children only one was noticeably affected by the situation, avoiding birds for decades afterward, refusing to come out of her car when they hovered above, re-routing her own children twenty years later at the zoo. I don’t think it was the tactile violence of  it that upset her so much, despite the blood soaked feathers hardened in all directions, the smashed beaks, the smell of their rotting little bodies trapped in the house for weeks, like a mausoleum without the benefit of formaldehyde. Instead, I think it was the illusion of escape, the notion of the birds charging  forward each time hoping  to make it to the evergreen only a few feet away, watching their cohorts plummet, and again flying full speed into the glass.