A Bird Will Soar: Chapters 11–20

It isn’t until George reaches Ray and grabs hold of his muzzle that another cry hits the air.

"Him?" Byrd whispers, a swath of dirt across her face like she’d wiped at one thing, leaving behind another.

This baby has been separated from its mom and dad, in a nest that has fallen from the tree that probably fell too, and George said it was bad. Maybe a broken wing, or sternum, or tail.

It is a place for raptors to rehabilitate. A place for eagles and owls, falcons and kestrels, hawks and vultures, ospreys and buzzards, too.

Sometimes you think a person’s seen everything, then you remember, once you’ve seen everything, you know what the fallout can be.

The pot looks entirely too fancy for a bird rescue, with its rolled copper edges and pristine silver handles.

“I need to assess the injuries,” Dr. Martin adds.

George tries his best to gently unravel the sheet, to get busy with his part of the rescue, but Lark refuses to budge from her cocoon.

“Commotion?” Axel asks. “It was quiet. So quiet. Only the baby’s soft cries.”
“You missed the main event,” Emmett says. “Byrd and that little girl were carrying on. Such a ruckus. What song was that?”

“I watched those adults take off at the sound of Byrd’s crooning. That banging pot, too.”

He suffered some significant shock, and only today am I able to spend some more time with him in the exam room.

For some eagle pairs, that same nest might be used twenty times or more to lay, hatch, and nurture their offspring. They fly in, add to it a bit each year, really make something special. I didn’t have much time to examine the nest last night, but do think it is possible that the adults were the former habitants of the nest and, therefore, the eaglet’s parents.

See if they build a provisional nest nearby.

Aunt Nancy, who gets all the good information first, says that a certain engineer does not deem Axel and Byrd’s house livable.

She used to tell stories during catechism at the church in New Mexico, but when she moved here, she stopped going out, even to church.

“Sorry,” he shouts, then coaxes Ray inside the house.

It rests in the crook of the tree on a smattering of sticks no bigger than a bowl of pasta.

Through the lens Axel watches the adult preen the baby, touching it with his beak.

Do birds dream?
Some scientists spout
speculation, theory.

The shopping trip will coincide with dropping Axel at the Delaware Valley Raptor Sanctuary for one hour.

The plaque below the turkey states a very important fact: Wild male turkeys leave the moms behind to care for the young while they go on with their lives.

“The peregrine falcon is the world’s fastest animal when it’s in its hunting stoop. It can dive at speeds near two hundred miles per hour.”

The makeshift nest that Dr. Martin has created has pieces of shredded cloth, not twigs, and is no bigger than a shoe box, even though his real home was the size of a dining room table.

The baby cries, and the sound is different from the low tones of a few days ago. “Those are food vocalizations,” Dr. Martin explains.

The floor creaks when Emmett’s loafers rush into the room.

No one asks Axel to sit. That’s fine. He pulls the ottoman from the center of the room into the corner. Sits with one eye on the men on the couch, one ear on Byrd in the kitchen.

“We’ve gotten a few calls since Monday about cleanup, but I’ll have my whole team here so we can expedite things. I might regret it when there’s no money coming my way, but I just want to get Byrd back home.”

“Nanette Marie,” George says. First and middle names, but no last. This is a moderate warning. The kind of warning George believes he should give, not the kind he really feels.

Aunt Nancy holds up her hand, not like earlier with a flourish, more like a stop sign.

This stuff is between you and Byrd and that flighty daddy of yours.