CHAPTER 51
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Hank Salt-Croydon demanded of us, as we marched up to the three poachers.
Albert replied, “We would ask the same of you, but we already know: Hank Salt-Croydon — you are Mr. Salt-Croydon, I presume? — Eddie Meany, and Teddy Bouquet.”
“How do you know us?” Bouquet asked.
“A little Bird told me,” Albert said.
It wasn’t actually a little Bird, and the Bird hadn’t directly told him (Jubatus the Cheetah had provided the actual verbal report), but Albert was in this way giving props to the swifter-than-a-swift Peregrine Falcon, Falcona.
For the first time, now that the dust had settled, the three rogues saw the full extent of the contingent arrayed against them. At first, they had only seen the tip of the apex of a triangle of choreographed animals that began with Albert and Alexis and ended with Terri and her bevy of Snakes, Crocodiles, and Scorpions. That was daunting enough. But now they saw the tens of thousands of others waiting expectantly behind this triangle of opposers. In the eyes of the poachers, they were looking at millions of dollars worth of animal tusks and horns and heads and skins, as well as a bunch of other animals that they considered to be merely nuisances or ‘bycatch.’
But how to harvest these valuable beasts? they wondered. The animals were no longer ‘sitting ducks,’ but had combined en masse to confront them.
Not as stupid as you might imagine them to be, the three poachers realized their day was done. They were thinking of this ‘day’ as a literal twenty-four-hour one, though, whereas Albert and I and all the others were viewing their day being done in a much more expansive and extended way — permanently, in other words. We wouldn’t settle for any length of time shorter than that.
“OK, you have us outnumbered” — Salt-Croydon started to say.
“And surrounded,” Alexis added.
The poachers couldn’t believe their ears, hearing what sounded like intelligent discourse plainly expressed by this bird.
“You must have taught him” —
“Her,” she said, and blinked.
The men looked at Alexis more searchingly — peering, doubting, wondering, fearing. They were startled by her apt reply breaking the silence.
Turning their gaze back to Albert, ignoring Alexis for the moment, Meany said, “You must have taught her to say that, and given her a signal when to bring it forth.”
“I need nobody to tell me what to say, or when to say it,” Alexis said, ruffling her feathers. “You are surrounded. Look up!”
When they did so, the startled poachers saw the circling Eagles, Hawks, Falcons, and Vultures, along with various other flying creatures.
When Alexis had first told the poachers that they were surrounded, the tens of thousands of animals at the rear of the triangle of animals had begun to fan out, half to the right and half to the left, so that the only exit left to the poachers was to beat a retreat by falling straight back. That avenue was deliberately left open to them. Whether they would take it was up to them, though.
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