strobe lights and blown speakers

NEW YORK—Breaking into a grotesque, flapping half-run as his knees reversed themselves and pinion feathers burst wetly from his elongating fingers, rapidly deforming National Audubon Society president David Yarnold leapt through a window of his Manhattan office and flew in a series of ungainly swooping lurches towards the forests of upstate New York Friday after injecting himself with the DNA of a red-tailed hawk. “Look away! Look away, damn you,” the nonprofit CEO and feather-covered monstrosity hissed in a quasi-avian squawk as he disappeared into a thicket. “Oh, God! What have I become? I’m no bird—I’m no man—I’m a monster!” In possibly related news, several rural Hudson Valley communities reported that a large birdlike abomination bearing a resemblance to Yarnold had injured itself while attacking its own horrific reflection in plate-glass windows.