An Unusual Migrating

“Wake up you sleepy pants, we’re migrating today!” I opened my eyes, the autumn light shining in my face. Most of my relatives were already up, flapping around, making a racket throughout our giant pine tree. It was my Aunt who woke me up. I never liked it when she woke me up, because she shouted in my face, almost blasting my wings off, and then flies away like nothing ever happened.

Unfortunately, I wake up like this every morning. I ruffled my wings, and one of my brothers came over and said, “You should start packing you know, we’re leaving in, like, an hour.” “We are?” I asked. My brother was never prepared for anything, so I don’t know if he was telling the truth. He nodded his head, and flew off to annoy someone else. Well, earlier is better than late, I thought, so I got to packing. I just packed the usual stuff; a big leaf blanket, a dozen seeds, and a picture of my bed (I like sleeping, so don’t judge me). I put it all in my leaf duffel bag, and just as I was saying goodbye to my warm blankets, Grandma shouted, “Everyone get your fuzzy blue bottoms over here, or we’re gonna leave ya behind!” That’s my Grandma’s talk for,” We’re leaving.”

I flapped over to the longest branch of the tree, which is where we departed for our migrating every year. We all gathered around the edge, where Grandma was standing. You might have been a little scared if your Grandma was standing on the edge of a tree branch 8 meters in the air, but she was a bird. Plus that’s already happened too many times than I can count. So she was blasting out the migration rules to any young birds that haven’t migrated before, but I wasn’t listening because I already heard these rules 3 times before.

Most of the birds here were 4 or 5, but Grandma was already 9, so she was the boss of the whole tree. After her rambling about the rules, we lined up with our families in twos, and we started taking off. The younger families went first, because the older birds took more time to get organized with the line and such. My family was in the middle of the line, and it had 6 members; me, 2 brothers, 1 sister, and my parents. Me and my sister normally just listen to our brothers arguing, because that’s pretty entertaining. After some laughs, glares from my brothers, and some scolding from my parents, we were at the front of the line. Grandma said,” You know what to do, now SCRAM, there’s other birds in this world too that need to be in my lovely presence.” I rolled my eyes, and got ready for takeoff. When I say takeoff, it sounds like I’m an airplane pilot, but sadly, I’m not. The rules for taking off are:

1. Attach your bag to your body VERY tightly.
2. Back up 2 meters from the edge of the branch.
3. Run, and start flying.
4. Stay with the group AT ALL TIMES( this once, a bird didn't follow us, so then we had to rescue it from being played with by a gray pig)

So once I was flying, I looked around. It looked pretty much the same as last year; flaming, shocked looking trees scattered everywhere, with a few boring gray buildings sprinkled in like salt on potato chips.

Nothing really happens while flying; it's like running. It's just tiring enough so you can’t talk, but you don’t know what to do with your talking energy. What I do is make cool loopty-loops in the air, and my siblings try to copy me, and then we try to see who can make the best trick. Last year my sister won, so I was determined to win this time.

Since we’re so focused on coming up on a fantabulous trick, we didn’t pay attention to the time. The sky was a deep, neon orange, with some lavender splashed in a few places. The big yellow glow of the sun just disappeared under a cluster of fiery trees, as a transparent layer of darkness fell over the sky.

I was admiring the beautiful view, when I heard a startled squawk. I looked down, and there was a bird, about 2 years old, falling toward the road, where hundreds of cars were passing by at record speeds. Everyone panicked. “She’s only 2!” “AAHH WHO’S GONNA SAVE HER” “Everyone calm down!” That last one was Grandma, though I was surprised she didn’t shout this time. Everyone looked at her like she was wearing purple bull horns on her head, the chatter evaporating. She looked at them like they had 5 sheep butts on their face, and then shouted, ”Well, GO GET’ER!” Ok, she’s back to normal, and we all dived.

We shook our heads at everyone, cause the whole flock wasn’t supposed to go and save her, but Grandma didn’t shout anything, so no one left. We were probably racing toward the road at 100 km per hour, and we were getting into formation. What is formation you ask? It’s another thing that Grandma made us all practice in case of an emergency. I thought it was a waste of time, but we were using it now. Maybe Grandma does know some things, I thought. The older birds went on the right, I went on the left, and the younger birds went at the back with their parents, Grandma was at the front, like a pilot on an airplane. We huddled together to create a blanket the size of a restaurant, so it comforted the landing.

We swooped down below the falling bird, and readied our position. I saw the cars on the road stopping to look at a blanket of birds hovering 5 meters off the ground, but I didn’t care about that at the moment. The bird was getting bigger and bigger by the second, and I just watched. When she landed, the bird blanket bounced like a loose trampoline, I was barely holding on. I was on the edge of the “blanket”, so I was getting a lot of the bounce impact.

I tried to hold on, but that worked for about 0.3 seconds, and then I was flung out into the air. I tried to fly back to the bird blanket, but the wind made my wings as flimsy as tinfoil. The brisk autumn wind whisked me through the city, tumbling in the air like a circus performer. I finally managed to grab onto an apartment windowsill that was what it looked like to be on the 5th floor. I hauled myself up, and peered inside the window.

There was a human, preparing food in the kitchen. On the other side of the room, there was a golden cage, where a bird was preening its feathers. Wait, I thought. That bird looked like it should be in my family. The human caught them oh my gosh I have to save him, I thought. But then the human came over, kissed the bird, and gave him food. What? I thought he was a prisoner, I thought. The human said some words, but I couldn’t hear because of the glass window. It kissed him again, then closed the door. The second the door clicked closed, the bird went mad. It lurched forward, toppling over its cage. It hopped out, and then flew on the kitchen table. It opened all the kitchen cabinets, sticking its head in, trying to find something. It lugged out a huge yellow bag with brown bits shown on the front, and the bird ripped it opened. It jumped up and down, probably chirping in delight, and jumped in the bag. It stayed in there for about 5 minutes, and when it came out, the top half of the bag flopped to the floor. Woah, I thought. He must have been hungry. He hopped around the apartment, gathering little things like shoes and paper. He went back and forth, picking them up and placing them in the bag. After he filled the bag up, he nipped the seal at the top with his beak, closing the bag.

He took the bag to where he got it, and pushed it into the cabinet so far he had to get in the cabinet. He flew out, closed all the cabinet doors, and went to cleaning up the room. I watched him put things back in order, cleaning things with his spit, putting the cage right side up. After he finished cleaning for about 2 hours, he flew up to his cage and closed the door. He snuggled up onto his perch, closed his eyes, and started snoozing. I thought, That’s a great idea, that bird is smart. If I could live somewhere when someone did everyone did everything for me, that would be paradise. I realized that it would be no use to watch this bird sleep, and I had a family to catch up to.

I launched myself from the windowsill into the purple night. As I flew as fast as I could toward the big dark spot in the sky, I thought to myself, One day I will find out to get in that apartment. Because why shouldn’t I be able to be pampered too?