A Tale of Two Kites – Chapter 7: Diary of a Chick: Day 12
Day 12: The Chick Disappeared
11 o’clock in the morning. Tai brought a piece of cloth back to the nest. There wasn’t any leftover food on the edge of the nest today, and Tai didn’t feed the chick like she used to every morning. She just stood on the nest’s edge and preened her feathers. Later she walked into the nest without any worries of stepping on the chick.
She took a rectangular white board with some writings on it from inside the nest, then fixed the nest. I can’t see the chick anywhere inside.
Zen came back. Tai looked at him from inside the nest. She held a piece of meat from her beak. She then jumped onto the nest’s edge and rubbed her neck with Zen’s.
Tai flew away a short while later. Zen gazed into the nest, and he flew away too. Only the white board was left in the nest. The chick was nowhere seen.
I observed the nest with a heavy heart amidst the thundering road construction noise. Tai flew back, but she didn’t have any brooding behaviour.
It was raining at half past three in the afternoon. Tai perched beside the nest, gazing afar. (What was she pondering?)
Facing the downpour, I remembered the determination of Tai when she brooded the egg, the excitement of Zen and Tai when the egg hatched, the kindness of the pair when they nurtured the chick… But the chick simply ‘evaporated’ from the nest! How could this possibly happen? And why? I just couldn’t accept this harsh reality.
At 5 o’clock, a Kite (either Zen or Tai) returned to the nest and sat inside. A thunderstorm raged after an hour. Bolts of lightning split the sky, claps of thunder rocked the ground. The sky turned pitch black. Later it brightened. The Kite was still inside the nest.
The sky cleared by 7 o’clock. Stars twinkled through the moist tropical air. The moon casted a silvery glow on the treetops. The Kite inside the nest got up, stretched out its wings, shook away the water from its feathers, and with a large stroke of wing it took off into the peaceful night. I breathed the cool air after the rainstorm and pondered the unpredictability of Mother Nature.
Hypotheses
I though hard of where did the little chick go. I even tried to link the writings on the white board with the mysterious disappearance of the chick (though there shouldn’t be any connections).
I then thought, did the chick fell down the tree? I resisted the impulse to search under the tree, for I’m afraid disturbing the Kites and cause some undesirable effects, like leaving the nest.
Did the chick get ill and succumbed? Or did he got food poisoning or ate too much plastic? I wondered.
I did not notice any human disturbances before nor after this tragic event.
(Etta 06-01-2002)
