We'd reached the top of our street where it ends at a t-junction, the highest point in the neighborhood. That meant going right, so we did. Three houses down, I was lost in a thought when there came a sound.
shsz shsz shsz, it went, to the right and close and near my feet. It was a quiet rustling percussion, like a brush dashed thrice across a drumhead.
I turned to look, and as I did, the sound came again.
shsz shsz shsz, coming from a white-painted raised bed. The bed was one of three and empty, as it always is at that neighbor's house. They'd been put in back in the pandemic time, likely with the good intent of getting into gardening. Good intentions being what they so often are, for the past few years I've never seen anything growing there but grass.
The bed now contained copious quantities the aforementioned grass, once tall, now fallen, dry and dead and yellow-tan. Tugging at a tuft of it with diligent intent was a male American robin. shsz shsz shsz, went the grass. shsz shsz shsz, went the robin, tearing some away, and now it had a small beak-full.
It paused. It stood upright and still. One dark expressionless eye limned about in white observed us for a moment.
The little thumb-drive of a brain processed what it was seeing. Human: slow. Dog: distracted. Threat assessment: low. Flight: Unnecessary. Priority Task Nest: unmodified.
Back it went to gathering, shsz shsz shsz, dry dead yellow-tan grass and dreams unfulfilled repurposed into a home for eggs and nestlings.
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