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boy, they sure were noisy. Their cries were an annoying sound halfway between a squeak and a screech, and about six octaves higher than I could sing. I followed him to the barn, where he looked for some kind of home for them. But the raucous cries of Blue and Jay quickly drew an attentive circle of the Outside Cats, eyes agleam and tails atwitch.
    â€œThey’ll have to go into the chicken pen,” I said. “It’s the only place they’ll be safe.” The chicken pen had a stout roof to discourage cats, coons, and hawks. We filled a wooden box with combings from Snow White, Mother’s favorite ewe, and put the birds in their new home. They aggressively demanded food without ceasing, being basically two oversized mouths attached to two undersized bodies. They stopped their terrible noise only long enough to choke down beakfuls of a soft mash of chicken feed, fluttering their wings in excitement.
    â€œDo you think we should give them water too?” asked Travis.
    â€œI reckon it can’t hurt.”
    Travis dipped his finger in the hen’s basin, and then, wiggling his wet finger, let fall a couple of drops of water into each beak. The birds liked it. As far as I could tell.
    The offended hens huddled on the far side of the enclosure and clucked in consternation. Finally, to shut the hatchlings up, Travis draped the bandanna over them and they fell quiet in the artificial dark.
    But calamity struck the next morning when we found Blue, the smaller of the birds, dead. Its sibling ignored the corpse and screamed at the top of its lungs for breakfast. From Travis’s reaction, you would have thought there was no greater tragedy in our family.
    â€œI killed him,” Travis said, fighting back tears. “I should have sat up with him. Poor old Blue. I failed him.”
    â€œNo, you didn’t,” I said in a vain attempt to console him. “It always goes that way with the runts. It can’t be helped; it’s the survival of the fittest. That’s the way Mother Nature works.”
    Well, there was nothing for it but we had to have a funeral, interring “poor old Blue” in the patch of land behind the smokehouse that Travis had staked out as a sad little cemetery over the years for his unsuccessful projects. (I myself would have left Blue to the ants and beetles to strip down to the bone so that I could have a nice clean skeleton to study, but Travis looked too distraught for me to suggest it.)
    We placed the carcass in a nest of shredded newspapers in one of my cigar boxes, a brightly colored one with a dancing lady in a red dress and mantilla. I almost apologized to Travis for not having something more somber, so contagious was his grief. He dug a hole and gently deposited the colorful casket in the dark soil.
    â€œCallie, would you like to say some words?”
    Startled, I said, “Uh, you go ahead. You knew him better than I did.”
    â€œOkay, then. Blue was a good bird,” said Travis, choking up a little. “He liked his mash. He did his best. And he never learned how to fly. We’ll miss you, Blue. Amen.”
    â€œAmen,” I said, for want of something to say, wondering if you were allowed to pray over a dead bird.
    He filled in the hole and tamped it down with the back of the shovel. Thinking we were done, I turned to go.
    He said, “Wait, we need some kind of marker.”
    We found a smooth river rock, and then he fretted over how to scratch the bird’s name on it. The bell rang for breakfast, and I said, “You’ll have to come back later.” I handed him my handkerchief and put my arm around him as we trudged back to the house.
    At the table Mother took one look at Travis’s swollen red eyes and said gently, “Darling? Is something the matter?”
    â€œOne of my blue jays died in the night,” he mumbled, eyes downcast on his plate.
    â€œOne of your what?” said Mother, cocking her head and