The Beginning
by Sherri Turner
I wouldn’t have noticed so soon if it hadn’t been for Harold, lying at the bottom of his cage, feet up. He was an old bird by avian standards and he had been rather quiet of late, so I wasn’t that surprised. Sad, though – we’d been together a long time.
I was thinking about Harold as I walked to work. A normal suburban street it is, so not much in the way of wildlife, but there was always a bit of pigeon-dodging required and the occasional sparrow hopping about in someone’s front patch or, if I was lucky, a tiny wren under a bush. Not today, though. I looked around to see if there was a threatening moggy loitering nearby, but there wasn’t. Odd.