Richo coughed and flicked a few bits of dried bird poo from his hair and tiny feather from his eyebrow. “That’s foul!”
Caleb smiled – he’d managed to duck the worst of it – and had Tina pass him a torch. “Nope. They’d be chickens in that case.”
“Ha, bloody ha,” said his mate, still swiping at the flecks on his uniform.
“So where are the birds?” said Tina, squatting down and looking up the dusty chimney to follow the beam of Caleb’s torchlight. “I can still hear them.”
“They’re playing hard to get.” He turned to their hostess. “Eleanor, have you got a box or something?”
“Would a packing box do?”
“Perfect,” he said. “Hand it to Sooty over here. Richo, you stand by for incoming. And just be ready to cover the top.”
And Caleb grabbed hold of the mantelpiece with one hand and leaned low under the fireplace and reached up with his other, searching the top of the now open baffle lid. Funny, he thought, because in all his years of training and all his scores animal and wildlife rescues, he’d never once come across anything like this. But he’d grown up just up the hill at Reynolds Ridge where the parrots lived in the hollows of trees and drove the orchardists crazy in cherry season, and he must have learned something useful along the way.
He shook his head though, at the crazy bloody birds that chose a chimney to nest in. Safer than a tree hollow where a passing kookaburra might hear the chicks and fancy a light meal perhaps, but god only knew how the parents thought their chicks were going to learn to fly. He’d heard of the expression, helicopter parents, but this was ridiculous.
He skated his gloved hand along the metal roof. Little buggers were in here somewhere. He’d caught a glimpse of them darting away from the beam of light, trying to hide in the shadows.
Finally, he got his hand around flailing creature and brought it out and down. About six to eight inches long with soot disguising its bright plumage, the nestling wasn’t giving in easy, squawking a mighty protest. Richo held the box lid open and Caleb pushed in the unhappy bird to a flurry of feathers and shrieks.
“Oh my,” Eleanor said, “you got it. Well done.”
“There’s more,” Caleb said, already going back under the mantel. He had a feel for the terrain this time and he managed to scoop the second one up even faster. The third proved trickier just because it had more space to run around to try to evade capture, but finally that one was safe in his gloved hand too. He did a final sweep with his hand and the torchlight but couldn’t find any more.
The birds didn’t seem all that happy at being reunited in the box, screeching and banging and flapping their wings, so that Richo had a job to keep the lid from surging open, the birds surprisingly strong despite their immaturity.
“That’s it,” said Caleb, rubbing his gloves together, shouting to make himself heard over the cacophony of shrieks and bangs coming from the box. “You might want to cover the box with a blanket so it’s darker and they think they’re back in the chimney and settle again.”
And Eleanor nodded up at him over the squawking box and he saw a cheeky glimmer in her eyes. “You really think they’ll settle?”
He couldn’t help but smile, even as he shrugged and folded up a tarp. “It’s worth a shot.”
They were on their way back to the station, the completion of the incident radioed in, when Richo chortled to himself.
“What?” said Caleb.
“My mum always used to complain when the five of us kids piled into the back of the car after school. Said it sounded like a box of birds.” He grinned. “Poor Mum, now I know what she meant.”
The rest of the week passed, happily, just as uneventfully for Caleb. He was looking forward to Sunday and working at the Ashton Show and seeing Ava again. And then he remembered the feel of her clever tongue swirling around his dick, and he was looking forward to a whole lot more besides. There were times he kind of wished he hadn’t agreed to this arrangement, where they lived and worked separate lives and came together only occasionally to burn up the sheets – thinking how good would it be to go home to Ava every night, and have her and her hot body on tap. But that wasn’t how their arrangement worked. Sex was what he’d offered and she’d accepted. Neither of them had been looking for a relationship and he’d been happy to agree with her terms if it meant having the best sex of his life.
Besides, after Angie, he could see how quickly the little happy ever fantasy could turn south. Nope, he thought with a sigh, remembering the grief and pain that had been those torrid years, better to have a taste of paradise every now and then, than risk paradise turning into hell on earth.
Even if it didn’t stop him thinking about it.
But he’d see her Sunday, and meanwhile, there was plenty to do at the station to keep him busy. There was a fountain on a main street due to a burst water main, and he’d spent a morning in wet weather gear directing vehicles around while the water department battled to turn off the supply. There’d been a primary school visit, where they’d turned on the flashing lights and the siren to give the kids a thrill and show how cool it was to be a firefighter while educating kids to call triple zero in an emergency in the process. And then there were days where the entire crew spent time checking and polishing
