[ WP ] There was an angel caught in the power lines .

It was my first day on the job, and the first time I ever smelled burning angel wings. I was shadowing Mike Fenwick, an old hand at wildlife and pest control and one of the best in the business. After twenty years working municipal, he'd gone independent with his own company, Fenwick Animal Control, and soon scored a corporate contract to supply animal control services to General Electric. His job was to patrol their southern Illinois facilities looking for evidence of vermin and pests, respond to calls regarding nuisance animals, set traps and remove captured animals, that sort of thing. Business was good, and he'd taken on several technicians to help him manage an expanding workload. I was the latest. 
 
 I was fresh out of a Wildlife Biology degree, and expecting to spend my days wrangling possums, raccoons, mice and the like. The one thing I had n't expected to be wrangling was angels, but we got the call at 11:20am, an angel trapped in the power-lines south of Pittsburg, and Mike set me straight on the way over there. 
 
 `` Most sixty percent of our work right now is angels,'' he told me. `` Clients like to keep it on the down low, so you do n't hear about it so much. Not good PR to have pictures of an angel getting cooked in your UHV line on the the six o'clock news, or smeared on the grille of one of your fleet trucks. But it's a real problem, for them anyway. For us it's gravy.'' 
 
 `` But where do they come from?'' 
 
 `` There's a big nest down Shawnee way, somewhere in the national forest they reckon but they have n't figured out where. Sometimes you get whole flocks of them coming out at once. Quite a sight if you get to see it.'' 
 
 `` Yeah, but where do they *come* from,'' I said. `` Do you know? Everyone tells a different story.'' 
 
 `` Well,'' Mike said, `` All I can say is I know a story too. Ca n't say it's for true for sure, but I've discussed the matter with some important folks over the years, and they've said the same thing.'' 
 
 `` What's the story?'' 
 
 `` Well, just a moment, we're here.'' 
 
 Here was a spot a indistinguishable from any other in the endless, flat landscape of cornfields through which we'd driven. Only Mike's GPS could tell us we were in the right spot. The power-lines were a ways off from the highway, so we'd have to walk a bit. 
 
 `` I hope it did't get stuck up there,'' said Mike, `` I do n't fancy doing live-line work.'' He grabbed a large bag of gear from the back of the truck, which he then handed to me, and we started walking. 
 
 `` The story I heard,'' I said, after a minute or two, `` is that it was some evangelical pastor, who was also a genetics genius. Thought he'd create his own army of angels to help bring God's kingdom to Earth.'' Mike just let out a chuckle at that. `` Kid, I met a few pastors in my time, and not one of them was a genius in any sort of science. No, that story's mostly horseshit, I'm afraid. There's a grain of truth to it, but just a grain.'' 
 
 By then we'd reached the base of the transmission tower. Scattered around there was a welter of white feathers, but no sign of the angel itself. Looking up, we could just about make out the shape of something, lodged into the tower's girders. 
 `` God damn it,'' said Mike, `` Do n't suppose you've got any experience climbing these things?'' 
 
 `` None.'' 
 
 `` Well, we'll have to do something about that, but not today. Guess I'm going up there.'' He started rooting around in the pack for various pieces of protective equipment, and donning them. 
 
 `` Angels are genetic splices, that much is right,'' he said, as he was getting prepared. `` But it was n't some crazy pastor or lone genius, it was Apple.'' 
 
 `` Apple?'' I said. `` The computer company?'' 
 
 `` That's right.'' 
 
 Without explaining further he clipped a hot stick to his back and began climbing. I watched him for a while, then began sweeping up some of the stray feathers into a duffel bag. After five minutes, I looked up again to see he'd reached the object trapped in the tower. I could just about make out him poking and shoving it with the hot stick. Suddenly, something dislodged from the tower and fell. For a moment, my heart was in my mouth, thinking it was Mike. But it was n't. 
 
 Eighty pounds of charred and smouldering angel carcass crashed to the floor beside me in an explosion of dust, blood and feathers. I let out an involuntary cry and leapt backwards. From up above, I could hear Mike laughing. Once I got my nerve back, I approached the thing. I'd never seen an angel this close before, dead or alive. Besides the stench of the burnt wings and flesh, what I noticed was how *weird* it looked. From a distance, angels looked the part, with smooth pink flesh, white-clad bodies, and great feathered wings. Up close, you could see how freakish they were. Like a strange cross between humans, birds and pigs, with big wide eyes and strange puckered mouths half way between beaks and lips. 
 
 Mike got down quicker than he'd gone up. `` What are you gawking at,'' he said when he saw me examining the angel. `` Get it bagged up.'' It took us a good twenty minutes to collect all the feathers and pieces of the carcass into sanitary containers, then we hauled it back to the truck. Once we were done, Mike lit a cigarette and we stood watching the corn waving over the endless fields. 
 `` Get a good look at it then?'' Mike asked. 
 
 `` Yeah,'' I said, `` I did n't realise how fucked up they were.'' 
 
 `` That's the DNA splicing. About ten different animals in there: birds, pigs, mice, you name it.'' 
 
 `` Humans?'' 
 
 `` Nope, that'd be illegal. And believe it or not that thing was created legally.'' 
 
 `` By Apple.'' 
 
 `` By Apple. It was for a product launch. Their iHolocube, about twelve years back, remember it? Well they wanted to make a big splash at the reveal, and it just so happened they had a skunkworks gene splicing lab. I mean, all the big companies did back then, before the government cracked down. Someone had the bright idea of making angels, actual angels, by splicing bird and mammal DNA.'' 
 
 `` See the idea was to only create a few. Maybe a dozen or so. They'd be released into the air at the event, where they fly around like they were trained to do. Nobody would get a really good look at them, enough to see the seams, so to speak, and then they'd be put back into captivity. I guess they'd be kept as pets for a while, or just disposed of. Except they never even made it to the launch. There was an accident at the lab, and the whole flock escaped. What's more, they were n't sterile, like they were supposed to be. They bred. And bred. And now they've spread all over the country, but particularly in the midwest. For whatever reason, the climate here suits them.'' 
 
 `` That's a crazy story,'' I said. 
 
 `` It is,'' Mike replied. `` But it's what I've been told. In a way there's a kind of poetry to it.'' 
 
 `` How so?'' 
 
 `` Well, scripture says God in heaven created the angels, and then created man. Then the first species we create all on our own is an angel. Makes you wonder what those tech boys might cook up next.'' With that, he finished his cigarette and we climbed back into the truck. 
 
 `` It's about time for lunch,'' Mike said. `` I know a decent diner not too far from here. Say, you ever eaten one of these things?''
