NO ORDINARY OWL (7 page)

“—be toast,” Sunny supplied with a bob of her head.

Byron pointed to a large cage with tree stumps, bushes, and perches in it. “This is Howard’s pen.” A strange black, white, and red bird hustled around inside. A turkey buzzard. Esther recognized again the similarity between Beverly Beake and this bird. Standing next to the screened wall, he darted his head at Esther’s feet. She backed away.

“What’s he doing?”

“Shoelaces,” Byron said. “He was found injured a few years ago. Was hit by a car while eating roadkill. Another group rehabbed him, but the bird imprinted on humans and when they set him free, he became a pest at the local park, swooping from the sky to picnickers’ shoelaces. Tended to scare people. So he ended up here. When it’s just him and me, he follows me around.”

Another look at Howard. Esther didn’t think she’d like to have a picnic where he swooped either. Esther was beginning to wonder if letting Beake Man take care of their owls was a good thing. Maybe he liked that they stayed with him. The girls wanted them to be able to fly off and be wild.

Beake Man pointed out the peregrine falcon’s flight cage, where the bird could actually swoop around. “I take him out to train him.” No sign of the bird.

“Where is he?” Esther asked. Beake Man said he was hiding in the foliage.

“What’s his story?” Aneta asked.

Lifting one shoulder as though the question weren’t important, Byron continued walking toward another building.

“Bill would love that garage,” Vee said, increasing her pace. “It’s huge!”

Tall and white with black-iron latches on rolling doors that slid left and right to open, it reminded Esther of the carriage houses in the public television shows her family watched. Fancy and plain carriages stayed in carriage houses until the groom was instructed to bring one or another out for the rich people. She couldn’t wait to see inside.

Beake Man slid the towering door to the right, wheels rumbling.

Eagerly, the girls hustled in after Byron, blinking their eyes to adjust to the semidarkness. As Byron flipped a switch near the door, the interior brightened. Before them were covered, tall, upright rectangles. A refrigerator, a steel table, and a large two-section sink stood on the left wall. Byron had quietly passed three rectangles, and as he passed, one let out a squawk.

The girls traded looks. Birds in those cages!

“So girls, tell me what you do know about raptors,” Beake Man said over his shoulder, having reached the steel table and leaned upon it to face them. Again that smile.

“I don’t like his smile,” Esther hissed to Vee. “Why was he so mean to us and kicked us out and now he’s showing us around?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Vee’s dark brows slammed together. “I don’t get you sometimes, Esther.”

That hurt. Especially when the Squad was on their last mission together. If she’d told the girls she had to move, would Vee have said that? Or was that how Vee really felt about her? Her stomach began to hurt.

“But see? I was right we’d need to know about owls and stuff.” She’d done her research.

Vee grunted.

The pinch of bitterness nipped. Hunching her shoulders, she increased her pace to catch up with Aneta, who smiled at her. In front of them, and just behind Beake Man, Sunny repeated the information Esther had passed on to the Squad. “We know they are called raptors—”

“And are birds of prey.” Aneta recited what she’d memorized from her paper Esther provided the girls.

“Owl pellets, which is their—” Vee hesitated.

“You can say ‘poop,’ Vee. It’s their poop, and if you cut it open, you can see what they ate.” Sunny bounced on her toes.

Leave it to Sunny to just spit it all out. Esther frowned then told herself to stop being grumpy. Their plan had been to make sure Beake Man knew they weren’t just stupid kids.

Whatever his tests were, they
had
to pass them.

“Oh, good to know,” Beake Man said.

Esther narrowed her eyes. Were his shoulders shaking like his sister’s did when she was silently laughing?

Pointing to one of the cages, he said, “The two juveniles you found are in here because it’s quiet.” He spun around so he was facing the girls.
“Quiet.”

The four nodded. Esther thought about letting him know nicely that they weren’t kindergarten babies. Scared animals needed quiet. They learned that with the community cats.
Sheesh
.

Beake Man moved to one of the tall beams supporting the building and flipped another switch. The rest of the interior brightened like sunrise. Not too bright. It was kind of cool. That wouldn’t scare the owls like the fluorescent lights at school. Those lights made her eyes tired sometimes.

A tall cage, completely shrouded in canvas tarp, stood off to the left.

He gestured. “Here they are.”

The girls waited. When he made no move to take off the canvas walls hiding the owls, Sunny bounced and said, “Aren’t you going to take off the canvas thingies?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “No.”

Sunny looked at Vee. Vee looked at Aneta. Aneta looked at Esther.

What?

Vee was chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. “Why not?”

“I want to see how they’re doing. Are they okay? Did the one owl stop bleeding? Was the other one hurt badly?” Sunny was still hopping up and down.

Beake Man finally looked happy, which Esther couldn’t figure out. At. All.

“Because wild birds being around people isn’t good for them. They need to not trust people. People hurt them.” The look he gave them was one that shouted, PEOPLE LIKE YOU KIDS.

“But we didn’t hurt them,” Aneta said. “We helped them. Can’t we just see them?”

“No.”

Esther straightened up from her slump. “So if nobody is supposed to see them, how come you can see them?”

“I used gloves to clean the wounds.”

“Are they okay?” Sunny stopped bouncing.

Beake Man told the girls that it would be touch and go for the smaller owl. The other owl hadn’t been shot, but there was something wrong with one of his wings that Beake Man had yet to figure out.

“And how do you feed them if you’re not supposed to see them?” Vee was giving him the Vee Stare. If anything bugged Vee, it was being told she couldn’t do something and then knowing someone else had.

He jerked a hand to another covered table. “I feed them with a robotic arm, watch through a camera, and use an owl puppet to simulate the mother owl.”

“A puppet!” Aneta smiled for the first time since Byron had ignored her question.

So there was no way to help. Esther’s heart clutched. No last mission for the S.A.V.E. Squad. The weeks would go by, everyone would get busy, and the Squad would never be together. She would leave and that would be that.

“Unless,” Beake Man said, looking up at the open rafters where smaller birds could be seen flitting around their nests. “You could help in a different way.”

“We’ll do it!” Vee pounced on the possibility.

Sunny spun, remembered, hunched her shoulders, and stopped. “Yayness!” she whispered.

Aneta beamed.

Esther blew out a big breath. That had been a close call. The knot in her stomach loosened. “Sure. We can help. What do you want us to do?”

Beake Man led them over to the kitchen. “Stand here.” He pointed to the long, stainless-steel counter. The girls walked over and stood obediently. Esther wondered what was in the drawers below the counter. Probably bowls and spoons?

Beake Man eyed them for a moment, like he was going to say something, then he shrugged and turned away to the fridge. He took out a large plastic container with a red lid like Esther’s mom used after she made a lot of pea soup. She recognized it because she hated pea soup and groaned inside when she saw the container come out. It meant a lot of days of pea soup for lunch and pea soup for snacks.

Beake Man placed the container on the counter. “You have to prepare what they would eat in the wild. Since they can’t fly yet, they can’t catch their food.”

Pulling the lid off the container, he pushed the bottom toward the girls and continued, “Cut each one in half, and then I’ll show you how the robotic arm works.”

Four heads leaned over the container and then jerked back.

“But, but—,” Aneta said, backing away.

“It’s—” Sunny gulped.

“They’re dead mice!” Esther’s voice sounded like it was squeezing out of a tiny space.

So that’s why he was smiling. Sure they could help the owls. With cutting up dead mice.

The big door rolled open, and everyone turned to look. Outlined with the brightness outside, the silhouette stood small in the doorway, but the tilt of the head and a toss of the hair told Esther helping the owls was about to get worse.

“Ms. Beake told me I could find you all here. I hope I haven’t come too late to help.”

Aneta’s gasp was loud enough to echo off the wide beams.

Epic Fail

M
elissa stepped through the doorway, made her way to Beake Man, and extended her hand. “Thank you so much for allowing me to help you here with your amazing service to animals.”

Beake Man just stood there. Esther was sure the word was “goggling.” He stood there goggling at Melissa’s big speech.

What was going on? How did Melissa get in? A quick peek at S.A.V.E. Squad faces told Esther they were wondering the same thing.

“How did you get in?” Vee sounded like she did the very first time Sunny, Vee, Aneta, and Esther had ever seen each other. The very unfriendly voice Vee was so very good at.

“Oh, my dad called his friend the mayor to see what type of volunteering I could do while I’m”—
did she hesitate the tiniest bit?—
“recovering from my accident.”

Vee muttered an ugly sound, Sunny said “hunh,” and Aneta didn’t say anything.

The mayor
, thought Esther as Melissa pushed past her. The mayor thought the S.A.V.E. Squad a fine example to the city and its children. Esther sighed. But the mayor also thought all kids got along as long as they were kept busy on “worthy service projects.”

The S.A.V.E. Squad could have told her that didn’t happen.

Now Melissa had busted herself into a S.A.V.E. Squad rescue. Anybody who’d ever talked to the rich girl for more than two minutes knew Melissa didn’t care about anything but herself. She was up to something. She’d been mad at the Squad since their first adventure.

Esther would be watching
very carefully
.

“Oh, for the love of mud.” Beake Man shook his head and stopped goggling. Rummaging in a drawer below the counter in front of him, he pulled out five knives. Esther’s stomach pitched a half flip and hung there.
Uh-oh
. That halfway stomach flip usually meant she was going to throw up. Unless she distracted herself.

“Cut the mice in half and put the pieces in this bowl.” He produced a medium-sized silver bowl from another larger drawer.

Sunny and Vee were shooting side looks at each other. They were closest to the counter with Esther behind them. Aneta was behind Esther. Melissa, of course, pushed Sunny aside so she was right smack in front of Beake Man.

“O–kay.” Sunny’s voice quavered.

“Just cut it in half. Sure. No problem,” Vee said, not moving to do so.

“If you’re not going to do it, you’re just in the way.” Melissa grabbed one of the knives and looked at Beake Man. “Might I have an apron and gloves? I wouldn’t want mice guts on the pashmina jacket that I got in Paris, and I just had a mani today.”

Esther heard a soft thud on the hard floor behind her.

Sunny turned. “Aneta? Aneta!”

The next sound was a grunt from Melissa and then the snick of a knife cutting through to the steel counter.
Urp
. The second flip of Esther’s stomach dove deep and landed, squirming, then began to bounce upward. Turning, she tripped over Aneta on the floor. Staggering until she regained her balance, she sprinted to the carriage house door, hand over her mouth, shoulders jerking.

Melissa’s words grated behind her. “Esther’s just not cut out for this work, is she?”

Esther made it to the outside and right of the carriage house.

“Oh dear, I was afraid of this.” The Bird Lady’s voice penetrated Esther’s emptying of her stomach. She patted Esther on the back, helping her ease back to a cross-legged position on the damp grass when it was over. “When people want to help wild birds, they often forget what wild birds eat.”

Esther focused on breathing in and out through her nose. When she became aware of the mud on her shoes, she made a note she’d have to be sure to take them off in the garage. Her mother would scream for sure if she tracked that much mud in the house.

Aneta. Aneta on the ground. She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. Collapsing, she stammered, “A–A–neta fainted. On the floor. I’m such a bad friend. I jumped over her to get out and puke.”

“Yes.” The Bird Lady hunkered down so she was eye level with Esther. “I was just entering the carriage house when I saw her faint and you take off running. You ran past me. She’s fine. Feeling a little light-headed, but fine. It doesn’t make you a bad friend. Would you like to go back in now?”