“So I’m supposed to just pull up my big-boy
yakis and be a man.” Kyrus grumbled as he closed the bird yard gate harder than
necessary.
“Well yes,” Werfas started rapping on his
bucket, full of treats for the cuddle flock.
The half-wild birds that people still rode with hoods and their beaks
bolted shut, all crowded along the fence-line, watching as the cuddle flock
came tearing out of the bushes to cluster around the two boys, jumping and
hissing and making general nuisances of themselves, trying to pry open the
cover.
Kyrus raised his goad and yelled ‘Bad
birds! Back up, or no treat!”
Most of them paused, raised their heads to
look at him before slowly turning their beaks sideways and trying to sneak up
on the bucket. Werfas raised his goad
and they both said. “Do you want ‘no stick?’
The whole flock backed up three of their
steps and went into ‘quivering, feed me’ crouches and Ky and Wer laughed. “Good birds!” He flipped the bucket lid open
and between the two boys they flung the long worms and centipedes out of the
seething mass to the whole flock fast enough that the first barely had time to
swallow the last of their first treats before the next were in the air.
The wild riding birds seethed back and
forth along their fence, biting at the top rail. “It’s going to be hard,” Werfas said, holding
the empty bucket upside down, as Kyrus unlocked the stick shed. The cuddle flock all knew the routine so didn’t
get up, though they stretched their necks long and clacked their beaks with
excitement. “I mean, generations of
Lainz tried to get the birds to tame down without success.”
Kyrus looked over the wild flock. They were still snapping at the fence and
each other, but one of the big old males… too big and dangerous to ride any
longer, was standing still, staring at the cuddle flock and at the boys. His red crest was flapping up and then down
but that was the only part of him that was moving.
“We might have something they want enough,
to give up trying to kill us,” he said. “I
still feel it’s like makework.”
He opened the shed and they pulled the
flight sticks out of the stone shed.
Since the flight scales often burned far longer than they were used, the
shed had to be fireproof. Every bird
jumped up as ‘their’ stick came out of storage and the whole cuddle flock
soared over, one by one, to the river to drag their flight scales through the
water to re-charge them, before starting a wild game of chase over their
enclosure.
Werfas, his own stick in his hand, nodded
at the big old male staring up at the soaring riding birds. He brought his beak
down and stared at the boys, then back up into the air. “He’s starting to put it together.” Werfas
said. “He’s starting to truly understand
that we are the source of flight.”
Kyrus nodded and waved as Werfas soared up
to take charge of the rollicking fowl.
Then he walked over to the feeding shed to let the penned lizards and
vipers ‘escape’ out into the troughs.
There was a lot of almost fights as the old riding birds shoved in to
snatch at the live food that was trying to crawl away over the edges of the
trough before they all got eaten. The
big red male was watching him again.
“Hey, you… I give you food. I’m not food!” The bird hissed and went back to pulling
apart the snake it had under both sets of claws.
No comments:
Post a Comment