Four calling birds.

Long ago in a distant, and, might I add, significantly hillier, land, an ennui-afflicted youth began rifling through his grandfather's belongings in what would ultimately be a futile attempt to find a hidden stash of Dum-Dum lollipops. (Had I but asked for them, I would have been provided with enough of them to cause my teeth to plink merrily out of my skull onto my grandmother's linoleum with a sound I'd like to imagine was reminiscent of a steel-drum band tuning their instruments. However, the hunt is often more rewarding than the kill).

Near the root-cellar door - the cellar being the repository of home-canned goods AND a gigantic, mutated translucent mouse-consuming spider named "Earl" - I found a curious contraption that looked rather like a snuff-box. It had a lid that was loosely circle-hinged to one side of the rectangular box and, burned into the box's bottom was the image of a wild turkey. When I asked my grandfather what it was, his eyes twinkled a little as he slowly moved the lid across the box, making a god-awful din. A din which, once he got it working properly, sounded suspiciously like a turkey's gobble. He handed it to me and, in a wise move considering the burning stares being generated by my grandmother at the racket-making device, took me outside and pointed up the side of the mountain at the brooding forest beyond.

"There are turkeys up there - go see if you can scare some of them up." Again with the twinkle. Before I could ask for my slingshot so I could plug one of them with should it be lame enough to traipse into my midst, I was shepherded beyond the yard-gate into the barnyard and given a lollipop. He disappeared quickly into the house, most likely to cackle himself into flushed oblivion at the thought of a ten-year-old in the woods calling birds.

By the time I got up the side of the mountain and into the woods, the old fear began to creep inside me. Many were the times when I was wandering through those woods and I would hear a large creature walking nearby - walking with me - just out of sight. And, in a part of the world where bears are numerous, it didn't pay to not be aware of your surroundings at all times. My grandmother loved to tell the story of how she had given me a colander once and bade me collect blackberries from a nearby bush on the mountainside; as she watched, a young bear collected his own treats from the other side of the bush, neither one of us aware of the other's presence. Honestly: it's enough to make you want to lay cable in your boxer-briefs.

After collecting myself from the hike up the mountain I began to fiddle with the turkey call, at first only making awkward squeaking sounds akin to the sound of a rusty nail being pulled out of a transient's head. Oh, I mean, um, an old board. Anyway, after ten minutes I'd gotten The Sound down-pat and I set upon burying myself in the humus surrounding me, so as to be, ahem, invisible to my "prey."

After a half hour of squealing and screeching, I'd begun to feel like I'd accomplished my task of driving any living thing - insects included - from me for a quarter-mile radius when I looked up into the trees.

Birds.

Big, black, ugly birds.

They had come!

As I gazed upon the magnificent creatures who had responded to my (clearly) expert call, I came upon a grim realization when I beheld how the dappled woodland sun glinted off one of the bird's naked pate.

Awesome. Vultures. The din I was creating must have sounded like a pitiful creature's death throes and, eager for the opportunity to plunge their naked heads into its bloated mortal shell, they'd gathered to watch the show. Finding a ten-year-old crouched under a pile of dead leaves must have been utterly anticlimactic, I imagine. Though, considering their brains are about the size of a standard pencil eraser, they might have been thinking about, oh, bird-lice.

And so today, on the fourth day of Christmas, I am reminded of the very special youth who spent an afternoon calling birds unto him only to become acutely aware that those that came would have, if not for their profoundly weak bills, pecked his eyes out for wasting their time.

Until tomorrow, I remain,

Domonic (Irealizethatthebirdsthemselvesweren'tcalling,buthey,who'swritingthisthinganyway?) Potorti