Fearful flight A flock of exotic birds and their owner escape f

Story by Helen O'Neill

Photos by Chad Rachman ~ The Associated PressNEW YORK

Sometimes she dreams things are back to normal, that she's lying in bed, sunlight streaming off the steel tower that soared above her window, the birds -- African greys and yellow-fronted Amazons -- screeching up a racket in the next room.

For an instant she is back in her loft at 125 Cedar Street, safe and snug among the old familiar din in the old familiar world.

And then police allow her into the shambles that is her home. And she shudders as she climbs the 12 floors to her apartment, still cloaked in ash and dust, debris still littering the floors. In the living room a giant empty birdcage sits shrouded in dust, a ghostly reminder of a previous life. Under the desk lies a chunk of mangled steel.

She imagines the building starting to shake all over again. She imagines being back in the darkness, hearing the terrible roar. She remembers the silence of the birds.

And she wonders: Will anything ever be right again? Will she ever be able to return?

Glorious beginning

Sept. 11 began as a glorious morning for bird-trainer Gail Langsner, as she strolled through the downtown farmers market buying corn and nuts for the birds and fresh basil for late-summer pesto with her boyfriend, Nat Priest.

She remembers the plane flying awfully low. She remembers the thud. And then she was running, flying down Cedar Street, bursting in the door of the tiny red-brick building in the shadow of the World Trade center, where she has lived for 22 years.

Debris was already bouncing onto the roof, ricocheting off the fire escape, tiny pieces of paper fluttering like confetti from the sky. Breathlessly she flew past neighbors clustered in the hallways and into her apartment.

Nat bounded in from the rooftop as the second plane hit.

"The birds," Gail cried. "We have to get them out of here."

She didn't need to explain. Even her musician-technician boyfriend knows that the enormous tropical birds, with their glorious plumes and razor-sharp bills, are fragile creatures. They have highly complex respiratory and nervous systems. Dust can kill them instantly. So can shock.

The couple bundled the eight birds into small travel cages: Aristotle and Peter, the African greys; Jonquil, the red lored Amazon; Josie, the blue and gold macaw; Max, the blue-fronted Amazon; Caesar, the hahn's macaw; Echo, the Senegal, and Fez, the half-moon conure.

Feathers were flying. Bits of concrete were tumbling in through the windows. The phone was ringing off the hook.

Exotic bird trainers are rare in lower Manhattan: Even more rare are trainers who board at home. Owners who bring their pets to Gail know she lives just 350 feet from the south tower, so close it seemed she could reach out and touch it.

Clutching the cages, the couple scrambled down to the third floor apartment of their friends, Susan Scanga and her husband David Feeney. As the others clustered around the television in the kitchen, Gail settled the birds in a back room, covering their cages with sheets.

"Good birds, good birds," she said softly. "Everything will be OK."

But the birds were quiet, sensing her fear.

Tall and dark with a serene smile, 42-year-old Gail Langsner doesn't easily get unnerved. She began her career as a lion-tamer in San Francisco before heading back home to New York and setting up her business with birds. She understands the power of calm in the face of danger. Even the largest, most temperamental macaws -- birds that can weigh up to three pounds and bite with great hooked beaks -- turn docile when Gail approaches them.

Like most of the tenants in the 22 apartments at 125 Cedar Street, Gail had lived through the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. She knew there was a good chance the towers would be targeted again.

But nothing had prepared her for the otherworldly roar as the south tower groaned and her neighborhood crashed all around her.

"Here it comes," yelled David, racing from the kitchen, dragging his two dogs with him. "Into the back room! Into the back room!"

Crouched in a corner, they clung to each other, four adults, eight birds and two dogs and listened to the sickening thud, thud, thud of the tower's implosion. The world turned black.

It was, Nat says, as if death washed over us.

Struggle to survive

Gail had no doubt that this was their last moment together, no doubt that this wonderful quirky life they had carved out on a slip of a street amongst the skyscrapers, was over.

Whispering a prayer, she gripped a birdcage and clung to Nat and prepared for God.

She couldn't believe it when the lights flickered back on. She couldn't believe the sight in the kitchen, a massive aluminum rod -- part of the outer sheathing of the south tower -- had crashed across the table where they had been sitting moments before.

And she couldn't believe it when, half an hour later, she heard that terrible roar again.

"That was the worst," said Gail, of the second tower's collapse. "It just seemed impossible that we could survive a second time."

Again they huddled in the back room. Again they waited for death.

And when it was over, when it seemed like everything that could fall had fallen and the world turned dark and silent once more, they didn't say a word. They just picked themselves up and prepared to leave.

Small fires were springing up in their building and on the street outside. The dust was suffocating. The birds were shaking, their feathers matted. But, amazingly, they were still alive.

Transporting birds

It was Nat's idea to tie the cages of the bigger birds to a broom, to cover them with pillow cases, and hoist them over his shoulder. Gail placed the two smaller birds in duffle-bags. Susan and David carried their dogs.

Wet towels wrapped around their faces, they made their way outside.

The streets were unrecognizable, a ghastly wasteland of ash, debris and flames, people moving as though in a trance, caked in dust and blood. A nauseating acrid smell filled their lungs. Cinders burned their eyes.

The birds can't make it through this, Gail cried, as they stumbled past the old Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street, its red-brick walls turned ashen.

Nat nodded. Arms locked around the broom, cages dangling on each end, head bent against the dust, he led the group into the lobby of an office building. The lights were on, the windows hadn't been blown out, the air was relatively clear. Best of all, there was plenty of water.

Gail set up the cages on tables and pulled off the sheets, and tried to coax the birds to drink. Someone found peanuts and plantain chips. But the birds refused to eat, refused to move. They clung to their perches, frozen with fright.

Silently Gail prayed that they would survive.

Using Susan's cell phone, they managed to reach family members and tell them they were safe. Friends on Canal Street, nearly a mile away, urged them to come right away. But they couldn't move without walking through the giant black plume of smoke that blanketed lower Manhattan. And that could kill the birds.

Waiting for relief

For hours they waited, listening to the radio, trying to figure out a safe route. Finally they decided they could wait no more. They had to leave before dark.

Again Nat slung the broom and the cages over his shoulder. Again they began a trek through the wilderness.

Occasionally, they would hear a muffled, plaintive "hello" from Peter, the Amazon gray that Gail has owned for 23 years. And Gail's heart would leap and she would say, "It's OK. Good bird, good bird."

At least he was still breathing. The other birds hadn't made a sound.

The two couples split up, Gail and Nat heading west, toward the Hudson River, away from the plume drifting east across the Brooklyn Bridge. But entire streets were impassable, blocked by giant pieces of twisted metal and rubble. They had no choice. They would have to turn back and walk through the smoke.

Up the East River they tramped, picking their way through the rubble, past the South Street Seaport and the Fulton Fish Market, past St. James Place, through Chinatown, where finally streets began to look normal.

"We didn't think about being alive or dead," Gail said. "It was just moment to moment survival."

It was late evening when they collapsed into their friends' apartment on Canal Street. Gail had only one thought.

She pulled the cages off Nat. She tore off the sheets. And, for the first time that day, she wept.

All the birds were alive.

There have been many tears since then, many troubles too. The couple have turned to the Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies for help. They have searched for a place to live -- they are temporarily renting an apartment on Pearl Street, about 10 blocks from their old home.

They worry about their health and that of the birds. They worry about contaminants in their building, which could still take months to clean. They struggle to comprehend their changed neighborhood -- and to understand their own survival.

Ready to return

At first Gail couldn't imagine ever returning to Cedar Street. Absolutely not, she said. She would rather take her birds and Nat and her life and move far, far away.

And then, gradually, as she read about the people who died, as they became real to her, she began to feel that the least she could do in their memory was go home.

And so, five months later, she stands on her roof, and listens to the incessant whine of machinery doing its grim recovery work in the pit below.

"I don't know if it will work," she says tearfully. "Maybe we'll always be haunted."

Or maybe they will heal, as Nat has believed from the start, when he crept past the barricades in the early hours of Sept. 12 and into his building. From the roof, he watched the first sunrise over ground zero. And he felt sure. That the pain of their neighborhood will become a wound that is part of their life. That they will do things to heal the wound, like make a tapestry of feathers from the birds that escaped. They will salvage their home. And, eventually, they will savor once again the sweet daily rituals of life -- Gail with her birds, he with his music -- in their bright, airy apartment at 125 Cedar Street.