prize. I seize her collar.
“I’m so sorry—” I start to say to the woman, but when I meet her eyes, she looks scandalized. “Don’t feed that horrible dog chicken in front of my flock!”
I stammer. “I, uh, I mean, I was trying to get her—”
“Savage! Brute!” The woman yells at Bean and me. “Get out of my yard, both of you!” She twists the broom around and thrusts the handle end my way like a sword or javelin. I pull Bean out of her reach.
“Yes, ma’am, we’re leaving.” As my border collie chows down on the rest of the meat, I hustle her out of the yard, a hand on her collar. She casts a last, sorry look back at the flustered hens and the indignant woman, but then walks calmly by my side back to Tamara and Dean’s house.
This is getting out of hand. Bean needs a distraction from her fowl obsession. If she doesn’t take to the disc chasing, we’ll have to find something else. Because this kind of behavior can’t continue.
Either Bean will end up in animal jail, or a feathered friend will end up in hen heaven. And I’m determined not to see either of those things happen.
Chapter Six
Logan
I love every run I take, always have, but for various reasons some are better than others. This one, on a regular Wednesday afternoon, is special because the weather’s great, and I get to hear the monkeys.
Let me be clear: monkeys are not indigenous to Denver, Colorado.
But they do hang out at the Denver Zoo, which backs up to City Park. So, sometimes, as I run past the perimeter wall, I hear them calling to each other with their high-pitched screeches and lower howls. It’s pretty cool.
Then, within minutes, I spot the graylag goose couple. These birds are large and—you guessed it—gray, with creamy white tail feathers, a garish orange beak, and pink legs. Graylags normally live in Europe, but this pair obviously got lost somewhere around Iceland and now summer at Duck Lake, a pond in the park that borders the zoo side. I keep an eye out for them on my runs.
Why do I watch for geese while running? Okay, I’ll admit it, I love birds. Amateur ornithology is my jam, a hobby I learned from my dad. On summer evenings when I was growing up, we’d go out around the neighborhood with binoculars and a bird book and spot different species like flickers, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and hummingbirds. Stevie sometimes came with us.
It’s not the hippest hobby a thirty-year-old guy can have, but what can I say. I like it. And Stevie thinks it’s cool, so there’s that.
Anyway, the graylags paddle around on the lake, along with various diving ducks like widgeons, scaups, dabblers, and the scads of Canada geese that always seem to be around. I slow to a walk and watch the geese and ducks for a minute as they plunge headfirst into the water in search of food.
Life isn’t easy for any animal on this planet, and I’ve always admired birds’ ability to look casually unperturbed while doing their best to survive the effects of us humans, plus Mother Nature.
I check my watch. Time to meet Stevie and Bean at the club meeting. I jog that way, and zero in on them immediately. I’d never say this out loud, but I have a weird internal homing device when it comes to Stevie.
Ever since we were kids, I’ve always known when she was around. Like, I could tell if she was in my backyard before she knocked. Or if she rolled her bike out of the garage before she had a chance to text me to go somewhere with her. One time, during our senior year at Denver East High School, which happens to sit on the opposite side of City Park from the zoo, I’d asked a friend of Stevie’s if she’d seen her. She said she thought Stevie had gone home. But I knew she was there. I felt her. And more than that, I had the feeling she was upset.
Feeling like a weirdo, but convinced I was right, I’d lurked outside the girl’s bathroom. Sure enough, Stevie had come out a couple of minutes later, her eye makeup streaked under her eyes and clutching a wad of tissues. Her jerk boyfriend had broken up with her after sixth period, and she’d spent the rest of the afternoon crying in a stall.
Instead of a Spidey-sense, I have a Stevie-sense.
Now, she’s talking to