Author and Columnist Shelly Reuben

I did not personally observe what went on during early sessions with retired Marine Gunny Sergeant Noah Hernandez, but after their second day at Bird Bootcamp, Archie the Giant Chickadee explained to me how he, goldfinches Rochester and Stella, and Titmouses Nigel and Gwendolyn were being trained.

Just listening to him describe the grueling drills left me exhausted. Little did I know that within hours – 24 to be exact – similar experiences would be in store for me.

First, let me set the stage.

It was Noah Hernandez’s job to toughen us up, teach us discipline, transform us from over 500,000 la-dee-da-what’s-for-lunch individuals into an implacable fighting unit, and prepare us to meet, greet, and destroy as many terror birds as we could in the five refuges where they were now entrenched. Before we began our training, Noah suggested that we call him by his first name. We didn’t. Instead, we followed the example set by Clayton Yonder, Commander of the Campaign to Eliminate the Terror Bird, and referred to Noah – to his face and behind his back – as “Gunny.”

The area that Special Investigator Clayton Yonder had designated as “bird boot camp” was a sizeable meadow behind Park Department headquarters. Clay had arranged to borrow a fire engine and some firemen from the nearest municipality, and asked them to park it as far away from the fire hydrant behind the building as a 300-foot firehose could reach … which put it about mid-field.

Gunny’s training strategy – conceived by him and Clay for our very particular (and peculiar) set of circumstances – was predicated upon Archie’s estimate of how many songbirds would be available to attack Terror Bird hideouts. Broken down into five battle groups of about 100,000 combatants per group, flying as a tightly packed unit, with each songbird weighing in at about half-an-ounce, their combined weight would be approximately 300 pounds: the heft of your average refrigerator. That … pitted against a really nasty, merciless, lethal, homicidal Terror Bird: average weight: 30 pounds.

The leaders of these attack groups, as previously assigned by Archie, were our brave, faithful, oversized and highly visible – to those they were leading – bird-buddies: Rochester at the Southland Elementary School; Stella at the Rock Haven Theater; Nigel at the Glencoe Beach; Gwendolyn at the Kings County Zoo. And Archie at the Pickerel Lagoon.

All groups were drilled two hours every day, one group at a time, by Gunny Hernandez, until all five had received their instructions. After that, they were put through more drills, maneuvers, and exercises by their individual group leaders, Rochester, Stella, Nigel, Gwendolyn, or Archie.

Gunny’s first drill required the enormous mixed flock of songbirds to circle like a tornado in a tight configuration around a high-pressure jet of water being shot skyward from a deck gun mounted on the back of our borrowed fire engine. The center of the tornado – it’s watery vortex … if I’ve got that right – represented the Terror Bird.

In other words, and remembering that this was a training exercise, 100,000 songbirds were whirling around a wild and ferocious water jet that, if any of them got caught in its stream, would instantly kill them.

As the firemen fluctuated the height, width, and pressure of the jet per Gunny’s orders, the combatants in our bird Airforce needed to vary their flight patterns to avoid being hit by the high velocity spray. I’m sure there is a better way to describe nozzle types and water streams … sprays, fogs, or clouds? … but don’t wait for me to do it, because I am hopeless with technical details.

Other than avoiding being hit by violent streams of water, the birds were also being trained to exchange positions: front to middle to back; up to down; and down to up in some configuration I was never quite able to figure out (I can’t square dance, either), the goal being to protect frontline birds from injury or death by constantly replacing them with a new frontline.

While the songbird Airforce was being trained to outmaneuver high pressure jets of water that were also … I forgot to tell you … rapidly changing direction – vertical, diagonal, horizontal, static flow, erratic bursts, gushes, or side-to-side streams, like a real-life unpredictable attacking raptor – two other key elements of our defense strategy were being trained elsewhere.

By Special Investigator Clayton Boyfriend.

If Archie hadn’t told me that day, I don’t know when I would have found out.

These – if such loveable creatures could really be considered “key elements” – were Byron, the dragonfly with a double set of beautiful transparent wings, and our adorable Daffney, the green-eyed, spotted (like an appaloosa) chickadee with backward knees.

I did not know at the time what they were being trained FOR, but Archie told me what their training WAS. And if it confused me, one could but hope it would do the same for a Terror Bird.

Byron’s instruction involved Special Investigator Boyfriend, using a baseball pitching machine with the ball feed chute pointed vertically toward the sky, to shoot wadded-up balls of thin paper … weighted to achieve better velocity … into the air.

The object of the exercise – if you want to understand the physics, look up “How do Magnifying Glasses Work?” – was for Byron to bend, curve or otherwise reshape one of his translucent wings into the configuration of a lens, concentrate the incoming sunlight into a single focal point, generate enough heat to direct a single ray of light toward a flammable material (the ignition temperature of paper is about 450° F.), and ignite it.

Think back to your childhood. Think back to your first magnifying glass. Think back to the paper towel over which you held in that magnifying glass as sunlight streamed through the lens and set it on fire. Or, if you had a disreputable childhood, as so many of us did (I admit to nothing), do you remember doing the same with a magnifying glass to burn ants?

Okay. Forget the ants, and we’ll return to Byron’s training.

Per Clay’s instructions, that amiable and still love-struck dragonfly – who continued to shadow me like a besotted helicopter at home – would track the trajectory of the crumpled airborne ball of paper with his eyes, twist his body so that the wing he was using as a lens would collect and compress sunlight, refract it skyward as a razor-sharp beam of light, and then set the wad of paper on fire.

They did this. Hour after hour. Clay shooting wads of weighted paper here, there, and everywhere in the sky, and Byron circling, soaring, and staggering this way and that to properly turn his beautiful translucent wing into a laser beam of light.

As the day progressed, the missiles got smaller and moved faster. As he continued to practice, Byron positioned himself more quickly, aimed more accurately, and never missed his mark. By the time Clay called it a day, Byron the affectionate dragon fly, had been transformed into Byron the sharp-shooting-flame-throwing defender of Truth, Justice, and Songbirds.

Go Byron!

As to our darling little green-eyed, backward kneed Daffney, her training was just as intense. But it took much less time, because her only assignment was to be (a) an exhibitionist, (b) enchanting, and (c) the center of attention.

All three of which she did as naturally as she breathed. So, despite Clay’s attempts to put her through her paces, Daffney really did not need any training at all.

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