I Don't Like Mondays Read online

  But Tim didn't ask Mildred why. He didn't want to hear the answer to that question. Instead, he asked her, "How? How could a parrot possibly fly across one continent, and then halfway across another? And how would she even know where she was going, or where the other birds lived? How could she find them?"

  Mildred leaned back against Hercules's cage, and he nuzzled her shoulder through the metal bars. Her eyes were soft and nearly as downy as Hercules. "It's in her DNA. She knows where she comes from. Birds recognize their source better than humans do. They will find their way home, no matter the obstacles."

  The idea of himself as an obstacle made Tim's throat clench. Her home was with them, wasn't it? He'd always thought she was happy. She seemed happy. This had all happened without warning. God, he wanted to cry! He wanted to bloody well cry now!

  "That makes sense for migratory species," Ramon was saying. Tim listened more to the birds in the room than the people. He wanted to fall into their cries like a feather pillow and sleep forever. "But for a Hyacinth Macaw who's lived in a cage her whole life? She's never set feather or foot in Brazil. You really think she can make it there safely?"

  Mildred nodded deeply. "Oh yes, oh yes I do. I tell you, boys, I've seen it happen before, a case just like yours. We tracked that parrot all the way to the Pantanal. It's in her blood. She knows where she belongs."

  She belongs with us! Tim had to bite his tongue to keep from saying the words out loud. Meanwhile, Mildred went on spouting facts and figures from the bird world. Canada Geese can fly for sixteen hours straight and reach speeds up to sixty miles per hour. The Northern Wheatear migrates from Alaska to Southern Africa. Mrs. Bucket knew what she was doing. There was no need to worry about her. She was a bird being a bird, following instincts she'd had to suppress all the years she'd worked alongside two scientists.

  Tim felt like a walking, talking mood swing as they left the university campus. With one step he was angry, with the next he felt guilty, after that it was sorrow, mourning, anxiety. There was even some joy mixed in there when he recalled the sensation of Mrs. Bucket's pretty blue feathers as she rubbed her head against the curve of his neck. He recognized immediately how selfish it was of him to want her back. She'd obviously left for some deep-seated reason attached to her animal nature, and it really wasn't fair to think of her as belonging to them, but wasn't there a sense of possession in all love? He belonged to her as much as she belonged to him.

  "What do you want to do?" Ramon asked. "Subway or walk?"

  Home was on the very cusp of walking distance from the university, but they'd managed many times before, back in the days when transit fare was a grave consideration. "If Mrs. Bucket can fly all the way to Brazil, I think we can walk to our house."

  Ramon nodded. He seemed strangely tall today, maybe because he was wearing that baseball cap again. For a science geek, the guy was incredibly focused on appearance, and now he was convinced his hairline was starting to recede. What a joke! It was no good complaining to Tim, who'd started shedding like a golden retriever at the tender age of twenty-five. He'd give an arm and a leg to have a head of hair like Ramon's.

  All this time Ramon had been talking, Tim was lost in a world of his own. He forced himself to listen as they trudged up the pavement, and realized the talking was in fact planning. "...and I think we should leave soon, don't you? It's going to take a crazy long time to get to the Pantanal."

  "Huh? Oh, yeah, for sure." The thought of seeing Mrs. Bucket again made his head pound. And then reality struck him like a punch in the face. "But, I mean, what are the chances we actually find her? Hell, what are the chances she even makes it that far?"

  Ramon's pace slowed at Tim's side, and his head turned slowly. Tim couldn't look up. He knew the look Ramon would be giving him, and he just couldn't handle it right now. He felt small enough as it was. "Where's your faith?" Ramon asked. "You've got to have faith. Without it, you've got nothing."

  But Tim had to wonder if Ramon's insistence upon leaving right away for the country of his birth had something to do with Tim's comment earlier. Ramon didn't talk much about the family he had here, or the family back in Brazil, but in the time they'd lived together Ramon hadn't visited either. Somehow, Tim knew Ramon was a black sheep. Maybe this trip would be about a reunion with more than just a bird.

  * * * *

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