An ornithologist found a Canada jay nest with three newborn birds and three blood-swollen ticks inside.
The ticks were enormous, too big for the hatchlings to eat. Two of the ticks were dead,
but all three were described as very warm. They’d probably gorged on moose blood
before being plucked from the ground or some bitten flank and heated against the now-absent
mother’s body. At intervals the hatchlings keened, sharp and soft. All throat
and eye they were, papered over in skin like a human’s. The ornithologist guessed that
the mother had left the ticks as hot water bottles to cozy the nest while she was out
foraging. Impossible to say. Impossible to see the magic show between the synapses of a bird
or any other sentient being. Only to deploy best guesses. And the imagination, its dark paints.
The tableau: a crime scene or a modernist play. Like cooling radiators,
the ticks clanked faintly as they powered down. The tableau, again:
loose bits of creation God had emptied from his pockets.
