'What is it?'
'Look, quick, look at this bird. He just landed right smack in front
of me.' Heather joined him near the window and saw a crow perched on
the other side of the glass. Its head was cocked, and it regarded them
curiously with one eye. Toby said, 'He just zoomed right at me,
whoooosh, I thought he was gonna smash through the window. What's he
doing?'
'Probably looking for worms or tender little bugs.'
'I don't look like any bug.'
'Maybe he saw those snails in your ears,' she said, returning to the
pantry.
While Toby helped Heather set the table for breakfast, the crow
remained at the window, watching. 'He must be stupid,' Toby said, 'if
he thinks we have worms and bugs in here.'
'Maybe he's refined, civilized, heard me say cornflakes.'
' While they filled bowls with cereal, the big crow stayed at the
window, occasionally preening its feathers but mostly watching them
with one coal-dark eye or the other.
Whistling, Jack came down the front stairs, along the hall, into the
kitchen, and said, 'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Can we have
eggs and horse for breakfast?'
'How about eggs and crow?' Toby asked, pointing to the visitor.
'He's a fat and sassy specimen, isn't he?' Jack said, moving to the
window and crouching to get a close look at the bird.
'Mom, look! Dad's in a staring contest with a bird,' Toby said,
amused. Jack's face was no more than an inch from the window, and the
bird fixed him with one inky eye. Heather took four slices of bread
out of the bag, dropped them in the big toaster, adjusted the dial,
depressed the plunger, and looked up to see that Jack and the crow were
still eye-to-eye. 'I think Dad's gonna lose,' Toby said.
Jack snapped one finger against the windowpane directly in front of the
crow, but the bird didn't flinch. 'Bold little devil,' Jack said.
With a lightning-quick dart of its head, the crow pecked the glass in
front of Jack's face so hard that the tock of bill against pane
startled him into a backward step that, in his crouch, put him off
balance. He fell on his butt on the kitchen floor. The bird leaped
away from the window with a great flapping of wings and vanished into
the sky.
Toby burst into laughter. Jack crawled after him on hands and knees.
'Oh, you think that was funny, do you? I'll show you what's funny,
I'll show you the infamous Chinese tickle torture.' Heather was
laughing too. Toby scampered to the hall door, looked back, saw Jack
coming, and ran to another room, giggling and shrieking with delight.
Jack scrambled to his feet. In a hunchbacked crouch, growling like a
troll, he scuttled after his son. 'Do I have one little boy on my
hands or two?' Heather called after Jack as he disappeared into the
hall.
'Two!' he replied. The toast popped up. She put the four crisp
pieces on a plate and slipped four more slices of bread into the
