The Flight My diesel pickup growled as it pulled the horse trailer up the final grade into the ranch yard. Pebbles popped away from the tires as they dug into the track. In the back seat, Rowdy, my blue heeler dog, quivered to be let out to chase cottontails. The horses stirred in the trailer. They were ready to be out too, on this hot July day. Visions of belly high green mountain brome grass danced in their heads, I was sure. Beside me in the passenger seat, Jack Sparrow’s hungry cheeps drifted up from his bucket nest. Of course. “You will have to…
Year: 2019
Jack Sparrow
The Feeding I swam upwards from the deep, velvet darkness of a good night’s sleep. Robins belted out their sunrise song through the open window, and farther in the distance meadowlarks added their liquid notes. The sparrows in the top of the fir tree squabbled amongst themselves. Then I remembered. Jack Sparrow! Last night I had left him under the fold of his rag in his bucket-nest, shut in my bookroom. I just about sprang out of bed and ran down the hall to see how he was. But then, a thought held me still. What if Jack had not made it through the night? Maybe the shock of…
Jack Sparrow
The Tumble The sparrows squabbled in the top of the tall blue-green fir tree in my backyard. As I sat on the deck early one evening last July, I could not see them, but they carried on with their bird-argument among the needles and cones of the fir tree. They had a nest up there, I knew, and I imagined the parents feeding the little sparrows bugs as the nestlings jostled and squawked in their nest. Noisy little things. My black cat, Taz, strolled around the corner of the house. Something caught his eye in the mown grass under the pine tree. He trotted over,…