Waiting For String

Arthur is now up a tree.

He is trying to set up the broadcasting device for Amanda.

The broadcasting device keeps on slipping.

What Arthur needs is some string.

You need string, says Jinjing, who is up the tree with him.

Yes, string, says Arthur. But I don't want to go down and climb all the way up again.

I'll go, says Jinjing.

Arthur waits in the forked branch of the white gum.

He is high in the eucalypt canopy.

Several birds have already flown by him. Some have landed, stared hard at Arthur, and left, without speaking.

It's boring, waiting for string.

He pulls his phone from his shorts pocket. No messages.

He wonders what Sweezus is doing.

Why not send him a message? And a selfie. Look at me. I'm up a tree, waiting for string.

He takes a selfie and sends the photo to Sweezus, with the message.

Probably won't get there.

And where is Jinjing with the string?

Bzzz. A message comes back almost at once. Arthur almost falls out of his tree.

It's from Sweezus.

What you need string 4? 40 spots, bro.

Arthur wonders why Sweezus would have said forty spots bro.

He looks again at his selfie.

It's him. But what's that small bird in the background, with a dull greenish brown back and head and no brow line, an olive rump and dull yellow undertail, a white chest with yellow tints, and black wings with ( maybe) forty white dots on the tips?

Of course the bird is not there now.

But Jinjing has returned with the string.

Thanks, says Arthur. He fixes the broadcasting device to the tree with the string.

He tests it, the way Amanda showed him, by turning it on.

It works. The call of the headache bird.

Sleep may be! Sleep may be! Sleep may be!