The following is a preview of a short-story from my upcoming anthology, The Agrigore. This collected volume will serve as a companion to my first book, Frog of Arcadia. If you enjoy my work, children’s literature told with an old soul, please consider supporting my future publications by subscribing.
“Why are we up here again?” Nancy asked to no one in particular. Only moments earlier, her entire flock had been grazing for seeds buried beneath the snow. But in a sudden whirlwind of impulse, they were now perched high up on the hydro wires, each of them spontaneously fleeing for the same unspoken destination. Nancy could scarcely even remember leaving the meadow, it all happened so quickly. “Was there a cat or some danger that I didn’t see?”
“I like being up here.” Agnes replied with a friendly peep. “It helps me to see who I’m talking to. When we’re moving about on the ground, you all stand right in front of me where I can’t see you. Conversations are always much more orderly up here.”
“How can you say you prefer it up above the treeline?! Nancy reacted. “It’s freezing up here!” The countryside had been blanketed in a fresh white coat the previous evening, and a biting north wind had swept in over the cleared fields.
“Oh, quit being such a Negative Nancy,” Peggy jested to thin smiles.
“What I was saying before is that if we could all reason together for more than fifteen seconds, without the constant interruptions and impulses, then we’d be halfway to sunny shores right now.” Debbie chirped.
“That’s a myth.” Nancy protested.
Debbie rolled her eyes.
“South is no myth!” Agnes rebutted. “Other, let’s say more coordinated flocks fly south all the time. We chickadees just react to the cold… differently, and kind of move around to nowhere in particular.”
“If you’ve got a problem with leadership, maybe you should say something.” Peggy asserted triumphantly.
Agnes swallowed her next words, creating an awkward moment of silence.
“That’s a bit snarky,” she finally replied, ending the uncomfortable pause. But her words were discarded.
“I almost said something last time, remember?” Nancy spoke up.
“Oh yeah. Remember Susan’s face? She was all like, lets go over here, and you were all like ‘really?’ with your head cocked to the side. That was epic.”
“These winters are brutal though.” Peggy sighed.
“They’re worse up here on these dreadful wires.” Nancy answered.
“But it is safer up here.” Agnes peeped, daring to wade back into the conversation.
“Why is this even a thing?”
“Its only a thing because you’re making it a thing.”
Debbie ruffled her feathers and huffed, exasperated.
“Didn’t your husband get electrocuted on one of these wires, Nancy?” Debbie asked, testing her place in the pecking order.
Peggy and Agnes awkwardly shot their eyes toward the white ground below, as if momentarily checking out. With a fiery gaze, Nancy’s stared right through Debbie.
“No, dear. That was a telephone wire.” Nancy finally replied with expert ease.
“Impossible.” Debbie challenged.
“What do you mean, impossible?”
“Well, I don’t know the science behind it, but I distinctly recall Zachary yelling his name when he died.”
“He yelled “black-capped chickadee” as he died?” Agnes questioned, coming to Nancy’s defense. But Debbie wasn’t having it.
“For the last time Agnes, literally nobody says the ‘black-capped’ part out loud. Do you? Its just ‘chickadee-dee-dee.’ That’s it! Why am I explaining this to another chickadee? Can someone please help me?”
“Why do you have to be such a Debbie-Downer all the time?” Peggy asked, exasperated by the unnecessary tension. “I thought Agnes was saying he said his name.”
“Zachary.”
“I thought he said ‘Zach’.”
“No, no. It was more like zeeek.”
“That was the sound of the electricity, Hunny.”
Nancy turned aside.
“Now look what you all did!” Peggy scolded. “You all made Nancy cry.” Really, she was talking to Debbie, though her words addressed the group at large. Peggy nudged over toward Nancy on the line. “There, there dearest,” she comforted.
“Not another word about her poor husband.”
“How did migration turn into electrocution anyway.”
“Hydro wires.”
“What about them?”
“That they’re different from telephone wires because they make that humming sound.”
“Look. If you puff up your feathers properly, its really not that bad.” Agnes looked like a grey puffball. “Winter’s all about what you make of it,” she cheeped.
Nancy sniffed her last and regained her composure. “What’s Kathy doing over there?” she questioned.
The hydro wires upon which they had perched were following a bend in the road, allowing Nancy to trace an endless line of chickadees as far as her tiny eyes could see.
A few poles over, the birds could see Kathy was starting to bounce around on her perch impatiently.
“She’s always chit-chatting, isn’t she?”
“Is that Susan she’s talking to now?”
“What do you think she’s saying?”
“Chickadee-dee-dee.” Agnes jested.
Each of them laughed at Agnes’ joke, finding it a good opportunity to move on.
“Sometimes I wonder if they even like each other.” Debbie asserted. “I think they’re jealous of our friendship.”
“Definitely!” Peggy replied.
Suddenly, as abruptly as they had arrived, the flock of chickadees abandoned their perched position to relocate to some other unspoken place on the snowy plain.
Like rolling sea billows, they moved with organized chaos, no one really sure of their destination, but all of them moving in sync as though they were of one accord. And in one very important way they were, for each of them was fueled by impulse. If you’ve ever seen birds move in this way, then you’ve seen the mob spirit of self-preservation that animates the stock market; everyone speculating on value, but few looking for anything of true worth. In the same way, idle talk leads to poverty. And so it was that the chickadees would doom themselves to an endless cycle of hardships, winter after bitter winter — always moving about but never migrating; busy but never satisfied.
I truly hope that you enjoyed this short story. This tale was written as a supplement to my first book, Frog of Arcadia. If you haven’t read Frog of Arcadia yet, you can grab your copy here. Please feel free to share your thoughts below. And thank you for reading Birds on a Wire.
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