
The Little Girl Who Wanted To Be a Bird
At least, I think that is what she said
Hi! This is part of my “What You Wanted Me To Write” series where readers tell me what to write about. No topic is too hard! Today’s suggestion? Birds. Read the rest of the topics here.
This article is dedicated to Kathleen and to all lovers of the beautiful and natural.
About a month ago , I was at the park with my all-time favorite people.
“Favorites? You mean-”
No.
I don’t mean Bae, my squad, or the fam.
(forgive the language but one must fit in, right?)
I mean Teresa’s Little Band of Intrepid Explorers.
There are seven of us.
It is rumored the eldest (other than myself) is not older than eight.
An elite crew but they have earned this title.
My little friends and I had survived sleepless nights together.
We had battled such terrors as the vacuum cleaner and the neighbor’s dog.
Once, they had shown me the location of the peanut butter when I was lost in the pantry. I returned the favor by delivering one of their members from the scourge of a diaper rash.
You could say we had been through thick and thin and I would reply that, yes, we had finished both the thick chapter books and the thin picture books. We had finished them not once but roughly ten times.
Let’s return to the story.
Another adventure awaited my crew : the park.
The park?
Yes. The one with the spinning thing, to be precise.
When we arrived at the park, someone must have called “launch-off”. This is because immediately the two gentlemen in my group launched from their car seats like space shuttles headed for the moon.
They propelled, like human slingshots, their short bodies in the direction of the spinning things.
Once they were mounted, they began to spin.
At time of publishing, they are probably still spinning.
But Tatiana, their sister, noticed something else.
“What, Tatiana?”
She was pointing at something-was it the bush? No, now the finger went to the sky.
“Airplane?”
No, it was not an airplane. It was a-
“Hummmbrddd….aheehee”

I have forgotten to mention that Tatiana, while being an essential and driven member of our team, is still updating her system to deal with this new form of communication called speech.
“What, Tatiana? What do you see?”
Then I saw it too. Many of them.
Hummingbirds. In the sky, in the bush, one just a foot away from us.
Their quick jerky movements captivated Tatiana’s attention but also made her laugh.
Fluttering from leaf to leaf, never entirely stopping for rest, they moved like her brothers at zoo exhibits.
“Tatiana,” I said. I ask questions of children the way the FBI asks them of criminals, “what is your favorite animal?”
She laughed.
It made me laugh too.
“A..a..ahummmbur!”
And then she loudly clapped her hands and all the Hummingbirds flew away from us.
Oremus Pro Invicem.
Teresa
Do you think you have a question so hard I cannot write on it?
Or have a topic as basic as buttered bread but you want me to write a personal anecdote on it?
Leave them in the comments! I am up for the challenge.
