The Wrack

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 5/24/2015.

The small bird my boys found in the backyard last weekend was olive green with an orange crown like a dirty hunter’s hat. It showed no signs of violence, but it was definitely dead. No rigor mortis, so it wasn’t a winter casualty emerged from the snow. …that’s as far as our “CSI: South Portland” investigation went before I got a shovel and buried the bird six inches under. My seven-year-old placed a cantaloupe-sized rock over the grave and we went on with our day.

It was only after going back inside that evening that I began to wonder what species of bird it had been.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/17/2014.

Around the time I was twelve, I went through what my parents called “the Indiana Jones stage.” I wore an officially licensed brown fedora, carried a homemade clothesline “bullwhip,” and definitely expected to be an archaeologist when I grew up. I even talked my way into a field expedition to the Caribbean island of Grenada, though I was two years short of their minimum age requirement. Rules didn’t matter – in search of lost tribes, buried treasure, even whip-cracking adventure, I dreamt only of piercing the jungle’s dark heart. Cue the trumpets!