The Cliff’s Edge

Inside the egg the heron dreams of flight. --Mirabai

Research has shown that birds experience REM sleep, which may mean they dream the way humans do.

The great auk (Pinguinus impennis) is driven to extinction in the modern era by Europeans who hunt and kill the bird for its down, used to make pillows. The bird’s demise is hastened further by its own increasing rarity, as museums and collectors are willing to pay enticing sums for specimens, money that proves irresistible to poor fishers and sheepherders.

The very last colony of great auks survives until the middle of the nineteenth century, on the nearly-inaccessible island of Eldey, off the coast of Iceland. On July 3rd, 1844, three men sent in search of great auks by a wealthy collector find what is possibly the very last breeding pair of great auks in the world, incubating a single egg. One of the men, Sigurður Ísleifsson, later described what took place.

“The rocks were covered with blackbirds and then we saw the geirfugles (the auks) ... They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but mine was going to the edge of the cliff. It walked like a man ... but moved its feet quickly. I caught it close to the edge, a precipice many fathoms deep. Its wings lay close to the sides, not hanging out. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him. “

The third man, Ketil Ketilsson, finds the nest and, acting on a familiar human impulse which has never been fully understood, smashes the egg with his boot. Late that evening, he and his companions return home from their long, exhausting day, crawl into bed, and fall asleep quickly, their heads filling with phantom people and scenes that vanish into nothingness and are left unrecorded when they wake.

After this night there are no more great auk dreams.