"Better Than Snail Mail"

 

When I was a kid, there were plenty of times when I wanted to send someone mail but couldn't get to the post office in time or was a few cents short of the money I needed to buy stamps. In those cases, I made a trip to see Mr. Aves.

I still remember the time I made a card for my grandmother when she lost her job. Allowance Day was two days away; I was a sucker for tater tots and so had gone back and paid for seconds at lunch at the school cafeteria; in short, I was a handful of pennies away from what being I called "broke," and so I went to ask if Mr. Aves could help. I was only expecting a robin or a sparrow. But he took my pennies and from the bunch plucked one that had all the shine of the morning on it. "Well, now, here we have something special," he told me. "For this, we can do for your grandma something very nice." From his cages he brought out a kestrel, young and razor-thin and spectacular, and gave the bird my card to deliver to my grandmother. 

More than anyone, I think Mr. Aves understood the magic of getting a letter in the mail.

"Never Tear Us Apart"

 

"Please! Let me down!" the fledgling robin chirped as the hawk plucked it from the ground.

"Sure, I'll get right on that," said the hawk.

The robin's voice nipped at the air as it continued to cry. "Please! My brother's down there! I can't leave him alone, or else he'll get in trouble."

The hawk's response was to release the young robin and let her go tumbling across the lawn just below them. The hawk glided onto the grass behind her.

"So let me get this straight," the hawk said as the robin righted itself. "You believe that if I let you go back to your brother--brother, you said, yes?--you'll be able to keep him out of trouble, and he'll be fine?"

"Oh, yes," the robin said, giving her feathers a shake. "That's what our mom said. She said that as long as we stay together, we'll be all right."

"I see," said the hawk. "Well, then, I believe we have no choice but to go find your brother." The way the hawk spread her wings, it was almost as if she knew how to smile.

"Earthworms"

Poor little worm.

The robin hopped in a circle until it was facing me, stopped, and tilted its head. I tilted mine so that we were mirror-friends and asked, "What are you looking at?"

"Quiet," the robin answered with a snap of its beak. We sat silently for a few seconds. "Ah, they're too far underground," it said afterward. "I was listening to the earthworms."

"You can hear them?"

"You can't?" The robin tilted its head toward the other wing. "Listen," it told me. I heard a lawnmower in action somewhere around the corner. A tree stood nearby with its flowers tumbling down in catkins; I heard them brush against each other in the breeze as if they were bells made of whispers. But I couldn't hear the worms.

"Oh, wow," said the robin. "They're really wriggling down there. I don't know. I think they might be feeding on something. It sounds kinda big." It hopped forward and looked at me, its beak pointing like a finger. "So did you, like, put something down there? Maybe, you know, bury something? Not that it matters to me," the robin said. "I'm just wondering."

I let my jaw drop. "I'm not a killer!" I told it. "And I only moved here a month ago! I don't know anything about this place."

The robin's red breast puffed up as if the bird were drawing in a sharp breath. "Seems there's a lot you don't know," it said, giving its feathers a shake. "You don't know what worms sounds like, you don't know what's going on under your own front yard--just out of curiosity, do you even understand why you're able to talk to me right now?"

I didn't have to answer. The robin saw my frown.

"Okay, let me go speak to a few birds about some things," it said, in a gentler voice than it had been using, closer to its usual song. "Wait here. I'll be right back." I watched it spring into the air, wondering where it thought--given all that I had just heard, and all that I still wasn't able to hear--I would possibly go.

"The Road Less Traveled"

 

For a while, I thought it was the one I saw in front of me, stretching from left to right like a smile and crossing my entire range of vision. I observed only one car moving along the road the whole time I was there. It motored forward swiftly and steadily, its pace like that of a hawk approaching prey.

Then lights came on above me. I saw them reflected into lanes across the rolling sky. A large bird rose from the top of a telephone pole and traveled west along that overhead highway. It was just a trick of the eyes.

Yet knowing that it was a trick--does that really make a difference?

"Suet Cakes"

 

On her break, the woman went outside and sat on a bench near the tree with all the birdfeeders. She nibbled on her trail mix granola bar and sipped her coffee.

A woodpecker, perched neatly on the side of a cage feeder that held a suet cake, turned its head toward her. "Yeah, not the best, is it?" the woodpecker said. It pointed its beak downward, indicating her granola bar. "But, hey, at least that stuff gives us the energy we need to fly. I'd peck through a whole pile of animal fat if it meant I get to keep stretching out these gorgeous wings." It nipped at the suet cake a bit more before lighting on the air and flitting up to the highest branch of another nearby tree.

The woman went back into the building, returned to her computer desk, and sighed.