Keeping Your Feathers
New chapter!
Howdy, howdy, howdy!
Welcome back for a new chapter in the series about a lost pigeon named Lew in New York City.
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Through the glass ceiling of the cabinet, I saw the faces of humans looking down at us. Back towards the entrance flap, multiple sets of giant hands were reaching in, grabbing at us, fingers like an army of supersized worms out for revenge against us birds.
I was fending them off as much as I could, pecking my beak and flapping my wings, buying time while Ruby fastened another necklace around herself.
Gripping the human jewellery was tricky and awkward, having to hold tight with our claws and to tangle and wind the necklaces and bracelets around ourselves in any way that we could manage.
“Ok, that’s enough,” said Ruby. “We need to get out of here.”
“We can get more,” I said. “I can still carry more stuff.”
I turned towards the jewels and tried to scoop up a bangle with my claw. Ruby ran over to me and stepped her foot down on the piece of golden metal.
Her voice was stern. “We need to go.”
It took me a second to accept it, but Ruby was right. Pesky pigeon greed had snuck up on me again.
I nodded my apology to Ruby and let go of the bangle.
We were deep inside the cabinet near the back, the human hands still snatching at us, struggling to reach us.
“There’s two sets of hands,” said Ruby. “Two separate humans. We need to go between them.”
After a brief moment to compose ourselves, we ran together down the middle between the two people. They grabbed at us, but, just as Ruby predicted, they were getting tangled up with each other and couldn’t get a good hold of either of us.
Just as we made it out of the cabinet, I felt the sudden grip of a human hand on my tail and legs. The human felt impossibly strong. I had to resort to the age-old bird escape technique of just going absolutely berserk. I frantically squirmed and twisted and flapped my wings as hard as I could manage, as if to try and blow the human away.
The human kept hold of me. In all of the sprawling, it looked like Ruby was in the clear.
I kept squirming and flapping my wings, trying to get free. I couldn’t keep hold of all of the jewellery. I could feel a number of my feathers being torn loose in the squabble. Each one stung, but I had to keep pushing.
Finally, the scramble paid off and the human’s grip on me briefly hesitated. I felt his hold slip and I went completely wild. Seizing the moment, I managed to wiggle free from the human’s hands. I kicked off of them and flapped into flight, rushing straight upwards.
I made it to Ruby up above the humans, getting there just a little bit after her.
“Are you ok?” Ruby asked.
My skin was stinging in every spot where I had lost feathers.
“Yeah, I’m ok,” I said.
We hovered for a moment. The humans were jumping up and grabbing at us, hopelessly out of range, but still trying nonetheless. They were shouting at us as if we had a clue what they were saying. The little jewellery store was filling with panic.
“So how do we get the door open?” I asked Ruby.
She was scanning the exit, planning.
“There,” she said. “Do you see that little black box above the automatic doors?”
I saw the black box she was talking about – above the centre of the door, about the size of a human’s hand.
“I’ve seen that before,” Ruby went on. “That’s what opens the door.”
“What do we do with it?” I asked.
“We need to fly in front of it to set it off,” she said.
Just as Ruby finished speaking, a human hat came flying through the air between us. They weren’t happy down there.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
We took off across the store. All the humans down below were freaking out. They were throwing things at us – hats, scarves, a jacket. We had to dodge the projectiles as we whizzed through the air for the door.
Getting to our exit, we went straight for the little black box. Initially, as we flew in front of it, nothing seemed to happen. We kept trying, blocking and waving our wings in front of it.
Finally, the black box acknowledged us and the doors began to open.
We swung down and through the parting doors. Just as we slipped through, a foul high-pitched ringing sound erupted behind us. The doors immediately snapped the other way and began to close.
Having made it out of the store, the wretched sound droned on behind us.
We looked around and took in the new surroundings of the open mall.
Just nearby the entrance to the jewellery store, Joan and the security guard were still duking it out. Ruby was up on top of a little billboard with the human guard below. As we watched on, the guard’s attention had snapped away from Joan and back to the jewellery store and the horrible howl it was emitting.
He saw us and all of the jewellery we were carrying. He swapped away from Joan and charged towards us. Just like the other humans, he seemed to have this idea in his head that if he simply jumped high enough, he would be able to pluck us from the air.
Ruby and I casually climbed a little higher out of human reach.
Joan zoomed over to us and we took a second to work out what to do next.
There were more humans gathering underneath us and although they couldn’t reach us with their hands, they could definitely throw something and hit us.
“We need to get away from here,” said Joan.
We set off back towards the food court, making some distance between us and the scene of the crime.
As usual, thanks so much for reading! Here’s to a great rest of the week.