Deathly Accurate

– Peabody and Chipper

Peabody tucked her wings tight and swooped low, gaining speed, the ground rushing up towards her. At the last exhilarating moment she twisted her wings, scooping up huge amounts of positive pressure and coming to a virtual stop in mid-flight. Then, with a graceful lightness of being, her snowy white body floated gently down, outstretched legs merely kissing the ribbon of tar.

Chipper thunked heavily to the ground beside her. “What’ve we got?”

“Well,” Peabody said. “Glad you acknowledge me as being more informed than you considering I got here all of three seconds ahead of you.”

“What can I say,” Chipper smirked. “I’m gracious.”

A pile of feathers, in varying shades of brown and cream with maybe just a smattering of blue, lay held together by what looked like some kind of reddish-brown goo. A pair of magpies was making measurements and taking notes. A pair of crows lurked in the branches above.

“Looks like the Big C to me,” Peabody said. “There’s traffic lights over there,” she lifted a wing to indicate, “and they probably went green while this…” she leaned around the magpies to get a closer look at the mess “…while this here young kookaburra was looking the other way,” she finished up.

“Or maybe,” Chipper said, wrinkling her nose. “We should just do another ‘Popular Misconception’ piece: I’ve got a really good one about bottletops.”

“Absolutely not,” Peabody replied forcefully. “We are not that desperate yet.”

Chipper grinned and approached the nearest magpie. “How about it?” she asked. “Can you tell us what’s going on here?”

The magpie made the sign of the Circle before replying. “It’s a tragedy,” he said. “And a preventable one at that.”

“Oh?” Chipper whipped out a stick of charcoal and began scratching on a sheaf of paperbark as one of the crows let out a long drawn out arrrrrk of annoyance.

“Are you reporters?” The magpie asked, leaning over to see what Chipper had written. “You’ll want my name then. It’s Nelson. That’s two enns and an o.’

“N-N-O-L-S—” Chipper started as the traffic lights turned green. The four birds lifted into the air to allow cars to pass.

“N-E-L-S-O-N,” Nelson said as they all floated back down on the next red light.

“Oh just like normal then?”

“What?!” The magpie folded one wing over his body defensively. “What’s normal about an upright honest name like Nelson?”

“Well you’re the one what’s made the fuss.”

“Alright, alright,” Peabody soothed. “Don’t let’s get feathers in a ruffle. “Just tell us what happened here please.” The crow arrrrked again. “Before the crows get angsty,” she added.

Nelson drew himself up to his full stature of not-very-much-at-all. “Well, Black Currawong and I were keeping the peace—”

“Black Currawong?” Chipper interjected. “You look like magpies to me.”

“Enough about our names!” Nelson spluttered. “Now, we were keeping the peace—”

“Oh, so you are Cappers?” Chipper asked.

Nelson blushed. “Not as such, no…” he said before regaining his bluster. “We’re statisticians. An essential service for Accuracy.”

Black Currawong cleared her throat. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What we’re actually doing is heading up a movement for improved information-gathering. Then we’ll try and become an essential service.” Both crows arrrrrked loudly.

“That’s what I said,” Nelson said. “And very soon, by the Circle, there’ll be a whole force of us. Birds will come to us from far and wide to interrogate our data.”

Chipper and Peabody exchanged a look.

“I can see what you’re thinking,” Black Currawong said. “You’re thinking: why would anybird want data?”

“Actually, we were thinking how familiar that sounded. You know deinonychus was stupidly toying with data-collection back in the day, don’t you? And not long after that the world ended.”

“Deinonychus was over 100 million years ago,” Nelson took over, “and the comet you’re talking about was 65 million years ago: there’s no link between them. This is different. Some birds will pay top glass for knowing where to put the next nectar-joint, or where to set up a marketplace, or where the likes of us might build their nest without the likes of them being nearby if you know what I mean.” He winked.

The next shared look between Chipper and Peabody said volumes.

The lights turned green again.

“What my esteemed colleague meant to say,” Black Currawong continued when they floated back down. And this time the crows thunked down with them. “Is that we will use this information to establish more schools, and look after the needs of the poor and underprivileged.”

“…and to place trained Cappers right where they’re needed,” finished Nelson. “Which brings us back to my point—this was an entirely preventable death if only they would listen to us.” The pair of magpies stared at the pair of cockatoos as though the discussion was complete.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Chipper said. “Let’s skip to you telling our audience how you accurately measuring the size of this kookaburra could have prevented this.” She pointed at the carcass.

“By having Cappers here, of course!” Nelson said in an isn’t-it-obvious-you-dimwitted-lower-class-citizen kind of voice. “If the Raven Force was doing its job of directing this flight path this bird might have been saved.”

“Arrrrrrk,” one of the crows interjected.

“Woah, ok,” Peabody said with a glance at the crow. Nobird’s going there, ok? But one clear thing I’m hearing is that you want a Capper on what, every corner? Or just on every apemobile?”

“Ahem,” said Black Currawong. “Not wanting to be quoted myself, you understand, given that you’ve misquoted me before, but my colleague doesn’t quite mean that.”

“That’s right,” Nelson said in a I’ll-explain-this-patiently-again kind of voice. “We just want them where they’re needed.”

Peabody frowned. “I don’t think I understand. Are you saying that having them at high traffic areas like the Le marché Avian or the pelican taxi-hubs and ape malls is not where they’re needed?”

“Ah they’re needed there, yes.” Nelson pointed at her. “But statistics tell us more than what meets the average eye.” He tapped his own eye, causing him to wince in pain and blink rapidly. “You see, this kookaburra was murdered by the apes. No,” he said, holding his wing out to stop the objections the cockatoos weren’t making. “Hear me out so you can quote me correctly. This kookaburra,” he pointed at the feathery-goo, “was born this spring. Her parents came to these traditional training grounds, just as their parents did before them, and theirs before them. And the apes,” Nelson was striding now, passion causing spittle to fly, “knowing they and all the others of his mother’s clan would bring him here, installed these traffic lights,” he gesticulated towards said lights, “last winter! Ergo, this young kookaburra is dead. Ergo, all we need to do is post Cappers at every set of new traffic lights. Ergo, statisticians save lives.”

“Statistics,” Black Currawong said.

“That’s what I said,” Nelson said.

“You said statisticians,” she said, standing straighter and touching her wings to hips. “Might I remind you of the importance of Accuracy?”

“I just realized,” Chipper said, slapping herself in the forehead. “You’re that magpie we interviewed about the ghost the other day!”

“I knew it!” said Peabody, rolling her head. “I always forget a lecturer!”

“Here,” Chipper asked. “How did we misquote you, anyway?!”

“You two said I give speeches in The Big Green.”

“Don’t you? I’m pretty sure I saw you there again yesterday.”

“No. I give dissertations.” Black Currawong’s wings moved to lecture-stance.

“What I’m trying to say,” Peabody raised a wing. “Is that you’re not talking about causality, but correlation.”

“They’re the same thing,” Nelson replied.

“Yeah? So would you also say there’s more bird deaths when the days are getting longer, therefore spring causes birds to die, therefore ban spring, ignoring the fact that—”

“Yes!” Nelson interrupted. “Because statisticians don’t lie.’

“Statistics,” the other three birds groaned together.

“Look,” said Black Currawong. “Short of another comet, we can’t stop the apes from doing what they do. What we need is more education. Ergo, we need to gather information to support our cause.”

“A-ha!” Nelson was obviously waiting for just this conclusion. “The parrots have tried educating the apes. And it’s no use. The apes just aren’t that smart.”

“Exactly!” Black Currawong said equally triumphantly. “We’ve got the better brains, it’s up to us to use them.”

Peabody glanced up in hope some bird of prey would come swooping in, so they could at least get out of this respectably. Right on cue the crows arrrrked louder and crept closer still.

“Oh look!” She said, with surprise and relief as they floated up on the next turn of green lights. “There’s a pair of mudlarks.”

“Of course!” Chipper said. “It’s date day! And why didn’t you think of that earlier? Toodle-oo,” she added for the magpies.

“Ergo!” Peabody agreed with a wave.

“Is that what that means? I thought he was talking about fungus.”