Everyday I saw them flying
Heard them screaming
Cursed their noisy presence
Resented the danger they presented to my wards
The baby fish that I was charged with
One tourist commented that
"Kingfishers sure are beautiful birds"
I agreed solemnly (out loud) but privately I didn't agree at all
Didn't see any beauty in their white and grey feathers
Didn't hear it in their coarse shrieks
Then today
I was taken aback by a strange shape flapping and struggling above the water
It was one of them, one of the kingfishers
Somehow he had snagged his wing on a fish hook and was dangling helplessly
I saw blood and torn flesh, my approach simply made him more frantic
I tried to pull the hook out but it was viciously intertwined with the creature
My hand brushed incredibly soft and downy feathers
His eyes were wide with panic, his thin, powerful beak open in bleak desperation
I put my hand out to lift him
His black claws put pressure on my hand, relieved pressure from the fishing line
and allowed me to extract the lethal hook from his ruffled, ravaged wing
He flew, he was scared of me,
he fell back to the water
I was ready to save him but he was swept out of sight
I stood there thinking
How terrible for a creature of the sky to die in the water
How scared he must be to be surrounded by the wrong kind of blue
Sinking instead of soaring
Then I saw a kingfisher suddenly fly up behind me
It might have been the same one but I'm not sure
Logic tells me that it must have been him
But my heart remains sad
and tells me no