Chapter 2

2 The Man with the umbrellas 'What are we going to do?' I wailed. Dave sat up. His lower beak stuck out a bit as he tried hard not to cry. He put his good wing around me. 'We are going to find ourselves another Human. 'I just don't believe that the Human Lady would leave us,' I pleaded.

'Well, she has,' Dave said. 'It's time to move on.' 'It doesn't make any sense. She gave us a shed.' I looked at our shed. How could I say goodbye to our wobbly shelves and the comfy old paint-tin lids that we slept in? And then there was my typewriter... 'Let's go, Skipper! Stop moping around.' I followed my best friend up on to the

washing line, where he spied out over the long row of gardens. 'Shall we try Him Next Door?' I asked. 'No point. He's got a full house with his irritating canary.' Dave craned his neck further forwards and stared across the fences. 'Follow me.' We fluttered down from the washing line and headed towards the back of the garden. Dave pushed his way through the flapping wood panels of the broken fence and held them apart as I squeezed through.

We had to walk as Dave's wing was still too damaged to fly. As my friend charged on, I secretly looked back at the Human Lady's garden, and cooed a tiny goodbye to our lovely home. Dave hopped along the track behind the gardens. His head bobbed as he stopped at each new fence, trying to find a crack in the wood or a clearing in the hedge to squeeze through and spy on each potential new home. 'Too many cats,' he announced if he saw

the slightest hint of a cat flap. 'Not enough biscuits to go around,' he declared if he saw swings and slides in the garden for Little Humans. 'Too boring,' he exclaimed, his beak all twisted in disgust, if he couldn't see a telly through the glass of the patio. My legs were aching and my wings were sore from scraping my way through prickly hedgerows and splintered fences. We'd walked past at least seventeen houses when Dave finally stopped and decided it was time for lunch. My stomach had been growling ever more loudly and angrily since house four. 'Let's go back,' I said. 'To what?' Dave said, pecking through

a pile of crisp brown leaves, looking for something to eat. He slumped down in a heap. His feet disappeared under his feathers and his head crumpled into his neck. 'Nobody wants us,' he wailed. 'I miss biscuits. 'Don't worry, Dave.' I looked at my distraught friend. 'Remember there was a time before the Human Lady and we were just fine.' '"Fine"?' Dave spat. 'Who wants to be "just fine"?' He sank further into his feathered belly. 'I don't want to go back to scratching around under benches and hunting through abandoned picnic baskets. I want to live in a shed with a constant supply of bread—'