Thing 12: Birds Have Namespost

Birds Have Names Another helicopter is falling from the sky, delicate things, these whirling birds of prey. These Black Hawks and Sea Knights have colorful names: EZ 40, Tarantula 26, Big Gun 72, Crazy Horse 08. Do surface to air missiles also have names? What about bombs? Little Boy and Fat Man sound like cartoon characters with awful teeth. Nagasaki would have been spared were it not for a change in the weather. The ground is no better than the air for moving troops, supplies, and weapons. Are fire and water equally dangerous elements? Do car bombs also have names? Another 80 people dead in Baghdad. Why is it even more disturbing to read that the warehouse stored a great deal of clothing mannequins, which were scattered on the floor, in thick pools of blood? Real limbs scattered among false ones? Do window dressers name their mannequins, or do they simply say "this one, that one over there"? Is God really all that great? How many mannequins were produced worldwide last year? Would we notice if 34,452 of them were destroyed? Would we care? What if every person killed in Iraq since the start of the war got their own mannequin, with its own special place in the Washington mall, and its own name, its own little history? How long is 34,452 moments of silence? How long until the first cough? What if we forget to breathe? When did you stop counting?