Chirrup!

It is that time of year when the sky explodes with light and sound and water beats on the windows and doors. I do not like this. Why? You may ask. Why do you not like this when you are warm and dry and safe inside your home?

This is true. Now. But I was born in the woods behind very tall buildings. Many cars roamed the area and smaller but much louder machines cut great swathes of the green grass growing near our den. My mother, what I can remember of her, tried to protect my sibs and I from the dangerous thing by moving us from our nest near the wood's edge to one deeper in the trees. To do this, however, she had to pass through the cut grass and the hard cement where the cars roamed and people scurried like mice through a field.

My sibs and I could barely see. Our eyes were not quite open yet. We could not walk but did a sort of belly crawl. We were young. Babies still. My mother took my eldest sib first, curving rapidly through the dangerous land until she got to the new nest she had prepared for us. She came back for me but...

A dark car pulled up. A very tall human got out. He spoke to my mother, made threats against her and her babies. Then the great grass eating machine roared again. I think it was near her new nest. My mother was confused, frightened. When the tall human got to close, she had to run. She couldn't carry me. I fell onto the grass, calling out in piteous cries to let her know that I would stay where she left me.

The tall human had other plans. He snatched me up, nearly crushing the air from my body. I heard my mother cry out from where she perched on the edge of the woods. I heard my eldest sibling's cry of fear.

That was the last I ever heard or saw of them.

So now, though my home is safe and warm and dry, when I hear the loud crash of the sky and the bright lights shine into my room, I tremble with fear. And remember my lost family.