Author and Columnist Shelly Reuben

So. I completely lost track of time.

One minute, Archie the Giant Chickadee and I are eating take-out ice cream in my car and listening to an itty-bitty swan having a nervous breakdown. Next, we’re outside a shooting range, and I’m blasting bullets at a predator falling out of the sky. Followed by a hundred-thousand fine feathered friends dodging ferocious jets of water; an oversized dragonfly refracting killer-sunbeams; and our favorite backward-kneed chickadee doing high-kicks and somersaults in the air.

Doesn’t time just FLY when you’re having fun?

Which brings us to today. Sunday, November 2nd. A mere two weeks after the press conference during which Special Investigator Clayton Yonder and his boss, Jules Landau, informed the world that songbirds across the Northeast … OUR songbirds … were being targeted by a deadly hybrid species smuggled into the country by evil people for the purpose of mass massacre and total annihilation.

That was a mouthful. A full and awful mouthful.

And what was I doing while all of that was going on?

Well … with Special Investigator Clayton Boyfriend and Gunny Hernandez off training troops at Bird Boot Camp, I had been relegated to checking items off the TO DO list that Clay left me.

Among other things, this involved writing a press release to be issued by the National Park Department to the effect that the emergency closure of Gossamer Gardens had ended, and bird, mammal, reptile, and even fish species decimated during a recent (unspecified) crisis gradually were being reintroduced, and the wildlife sanctuary would be reopening in the spring.

Clay told me to be sure NOT to mention lab-created hybrids, invasive species, or anything that might trigger an eco-terrorist response. “Or…” as he so colorfully put it “…’animal rights’ protestors will be singing Kumbaya as they plant bombs at Park Department Headquarters … seconds before Terror Birds gouge out their eyes, sever their spinal cords, and impale them on fence posts, so that they (the Terror Birds) can eat their (the eco-terrorists’) viscera for lunch.”

Before Clay left for Bird Boot Camp that morning, I asked (why hadn’t I thought to ask him or Archie before?) how 500,000 or so birds knew to come to our assistance? Now. How had an SOS been transmitted? How had Carolina Wrens in Richmond, Virginia, or Red-winged Blackbirds, in Bangor, Maine, known we needed them for a war against Terror Birds at the Glencoe Beach or the Kings County Zoo?

How … indeed.

Of course, I already knew the answer. It has been explained to me in detail at the picnic I’d thrown for our little friends in my backyard after the press conference. But I had forgotten.

I think it’s supposed to be rude to quote oneself, but as a matter of expediency (and I don’t think I could rephrase it better), I’ll repeat here what I learned then:

That chickadee modulations “are combinations of the chick-a-dee-dee-dee sounds they make … (and) by varying the number of dees in their song, chickadees alert each other to the proximity, size, and lethality of a threat. More ‘dees’ mean greater danger. Fewer mean less. Sixteen dees, which is their maximum, mean ‘grab your car keys and petticoats, because all hell is about to break loose’.”

This morning, before Special Investigator Clayton Yonder and Archie the Giant Chickadee left for Bird Boot Camp, Archie informed me that on the previous Wednesday, he had sent out an unprecedented 17 dee-dee-dees. Which, as always when danger is afoot, was conveyed bird-to-bird and flock-to-flock until the call-to-action had reached all of the songbirds on the East Coast.

Clay later informed me that among those who responded to the Avian Airforce and were now being trained at Bird Boot Camp were … Cardinals, Robins, Blue Birds, Sparrows, Tufted Titmouses, House and Goldfinches, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, Mockingbirds, Wrens, Indigo Buntings, Orioles, American Redstarts, Eastern Towhees, Cedar Waxwings, Scarlet Tanagers, Hermit Thrushes, Yellow Warblers, Western Meadowlarks, Brown Thrashers, Red-Eyed Vireos, Black-and-white Warblers, and Northern Parulas. As well as the above-mentioned Red-winged Blackbirds and Carolina Wrens.

Upon being reminded about the chickadee communication system, I had to chuckle, because I then also remembered telephone trees. These, before we had the Internet, emails, and texting, were a means of quickly spreading news of an emergency. A call would be made to, let’s say, Joe Burgess, to tell him that the Mill River Bridge was out. Joe had a list of 15 people whom he was supposed to call. Each had their own lists of 15 more people, until, within minutes, the entire countryside was on fire with the news.

Not very different from the dee-dee-dee method of spreading news. Which, for chickadees, songbirds, and other related species, is also something in the nature of a telephone tree.

Clay later told me that when he saw that first group of 100,000 songbirds, arrayed wingtip-to-wingtip in the meadow behind Park Department Headquarters … with all of their brilliant colorations and textures … they looked to him like a bejeweled mosaic. Ever since, I have wished that, other than being a wordsmith, I was also a visual artist, so I could make that magical image come to life. Alas, however. I am stuck with letters and syllables to communicate my thoughts. So, I will leave bejeweled mosaics to your imagination.

After my day of chores, which included not just writing a few press releases, but also going to the feed store for more birdseed, gassing up the car, and paying bills, I had to turn myself in at Bird Boot Camp because at 2:00 p.m. that afternoon, I, too, had to begin training. Not with Archie, Rochester, Stella, Nigel, Gwendolyn, Byron, or Daffney. But with the Big Guns themselves: Special Investigator Clayton Boyfriend. Bird Bootcamp Leader, Gunny Hernandez. Clay’s boss, Jules Landau. Jule’s brother, Marcus Landau. And me. Five people. And all to be trained in only one thing. Marksmanship. For each of us was to be assigned to a different Terror Bird “hideaway.” And each was to do just one thing.

Clayton Yonder would be with Archie the Giant Chickadee at the Pickerel Lagoon. Gunny Hernandez with Nigel the tufted titmouse at the Glencoe Beach. Jules Landau with Stella the goldfinch at the Rock Haven Theater. Marcus Landau with Gwendolyn the tufted titmouse at the Kings County Zoo. And I, with Rochester the goldfinch at my childhood alma mater, the Southland Elementary School.

Our training was different from that of the 500,000 songbirds learning to avoid being obliterated by violent torrents of water, although it also entailed high-pressure water jets and a borrowed fire engine. The difference being that our job was not to avoid the water. It was to shoot into it.

Apparently, for the past two weeks Gunny Hernandez had been training Jules and Marcus Landau – both of whom had never shot a gun before the arrival of the Terror Bird – at the Park Department range. Clay, Gunny, and I were already accomplished marksmen, but none of us ever had practiced shooting at highly pressurized jets of water. That day, and for the following two days, we did nothing else. But we weren’t just shooting at and into water. We were shooting at … well, let me describe it this way.

Did you ever take a Red Cross course in how to resuscitate a heart-attack victim? If so, you have already been introduced to a CPR dummy. I’m not sure how much they weight, but I’m guessing 30 to 40 pounds. They are flesh-toned (any color flesh), shaped like a man’s upper body, and have very realistic mouths. But their mouths didn’t really concern us, because our only job was to aim at center body as the torso rose and fell, tossed, turned, bounced, tumbled, and spun within and upon that violent fountain of water, until it – the CPR dummy – was completely obliterated.

The dummies, of course, were stand-ins our real enemy.

The Terror Bird.

And before we had finished our exercises, we must have “killed” at least 500 of them.

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