After Special Investigator Clayton Yonder of the United States Parks Service Avian Slaughter Task Force – my boyfriend – told me and my bird-and-bug friends that we might be able to help him identify an unknown predator massacring local wildlife, I remembered the feather.

I jumped to my feel, shoved a hand into my jeans, and dug out a gray quill, black along the center rib and slightly the worse for wear for having spent time in my pocket. It was ugly and thin, about 10 inches long with a pointed tip that widened only slightly at the opposite end.

I held it out triumphantly.

“Sorry, Clay. I forgot.”

He removed it from my fingers and studied it in a way that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes stories, where Watson described how his friend examined a footprint or ash from a discarded cigarette with infinite attention to detail.

I guess I was expecting Clay to say something like, “Aah ha. This is a feather from a four-year-old pelican with a scar on its left eyebrow and bruised knuckles on its claw who ate a dinner of crushed mash and maple syrup before breaking his beak on…”

But that did not happen. Instead, he raised his head and said, “I’ll send this to our lab for DNA analysis. Maybe they can identify the species.”

He removed an evidence bag from a pocket, popped the feather inside, and asked, “Can you draw if for me?”

I shook myself back to full attention.

“Draw what?”

“Whatever it was you saw at the clinic and then again when you were driving home … assuming that both were the same thing.”

I bit my lip, furrowed my brow (something I do only when I am feeling particularly professorial), and considered his request.

“I used to be a little better than average at drawing when I was a child,” I said thoughtfully. “But I haven’t sketched anything in years.”

Clay grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, led me to my dining room table, pulled out a chair, and pushed me into it. Then he retrieved a duffle – about the size of a gym bag – that I hadn’t noticed he had brought with him to the house, and rummaged through it. In due time, he pulled out a retractable pencil, a stubby pink erasure, and a small sketchpad.

He thrust them in front of me, and said, “Draw.”

“It was a bird,” I said abruptly.

“I gathered that when you told me that it flew away.”

“A monster bird.”

Special Investigator Clayton Yonder nodded. “I gathered that, too.”

By then, my friends had joined me at the table. Florence, the itty, bitty swan, leapt to my shoulder and nestled against my neck, as she had done earlier with Clay. Stella and Rochester, the two goldfinches, and Nigel and Gwendolyn, the tufted titmouses, alighted on either side of my arms. Byron, the dragonfly, flew in wide circles around the room, and Archie the Giant Chickadee settled directly opposite me, at the head of the sketchpad. His feet were splayed, as if anchoring himself for the duration, and he stared at my fingers, attentive to every move that I made.

I lifted the pencil and tapped the lead tip against my teeth. A few seconds later, I began to draw. Archie was the most vociferous with his criticisms. Or should I say … recommendations? … while the others did not hesitate to twitter and tweet suggestions for him to pass along to me. After a few minutes, Florence, probably wearied of the up and down motion of my arm as I drew arcs and circles on the page, deserted me and joined the others on the table.

“The beak was a little longer,” Archie said, his tone not unkindly, but firm in his conviction. Then, in no particular order: “There were more feathers around his head, and they weren’t so scraggly. The skin around its eyes was less wrinkled looking. And it was red. Can you make it red?”

“I don’t have a red pencil,” I replied.

From apparently nowhere (probably his duffle bag), Clay provided me with a box of colored pencils.

“Make the eyes nastier looking,” Archie prodded.

“How do you propose I do that?” I shot back. I admit, my “peanut gallery” was starting to annoy me.

“And the pupils should be bigger and blacker; the irises were blue with a yellow rim.”

I made all three changes.

“The yellow should be brighter,” Archie insisted. “Like a lemon or … no. More like an egg yolk.”

I searched my memory. He was right.

Archie and our friends continued to offer suggestions, all of which concurred with my own recollection of the creature we had found so menacing: “More feathers … sharper beak … red mask. Don’t forget the red mask. And eyelashes. Long. Long eyelashes.”

I closed my eyes, trying to visualize. Yes. It DID have long eye lashes. Weird. And talons as wide as the fronds on a palm tree. Okay. That’s an exaggeration. But not by much.

Try as I might, though. I can’t draw feet.

My pencil inched along the paper. My eraser undid what I did, and I did it again. This time a little better. Time passed. Clay disappeared into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Shortly thereafter, he placed a large mug at my elbow, which I gratefully consumed.

Back to my drawing. Back to erasing and redrawing. After an hour or so, I swiveled my head to look at Stella and Rochester, Nigel and Gwendolyn, Florence, and Byron (he finally had alighted on the chandelier over the dining room table). They all nodded.

I looked over to Archie. He shook his head.

“You don’t like it?” I asked.

“I hate it,” Archie answered. “But it’s perfect. You got it right.”

Finally, Special Investigator Clayton Yonder, mandated by the Parks Service to identify and locate the predator that had been ravaging the wildlife at Somerset County’s Gossamer Gardens – where hundreds if not thousands of birds had already been slaughtered – gripped my shoulders with both hands. I turned my head, and looked up at him.

First, he stared down at the imagine I had drawn on the sketch pad. Next, he stared right into my eyes. Then, simultaneously, both of us breathed out a single word.

“Scary,” he said.

“Scary,” I said.

This is what I had drawn.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2026. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com