Sneaky Pie for President Read Free

give her mothering advice.
    Sneaky, considering this, replied, “You don’t care if your egg is destroyed?”
    “Some make it, some don’t,” said the cowbird. “Anyway, I am not raising a bunch of brats, beaks always open, squawking for more food. Give me a break.”
    Still puffed up, the Yellow Warbler sharply added to the conversation. “You could stop breeding. Try and control your primal urges!”
    “Why? As long as I can get away with it, this girl just wants to have fun.”
    Glynnis was reveling in the exchange. With a superior tone, she said, “The rest of us are a bit more sensible about the number of eggs we produce.”
    “Jealousy, thy name is chickadee,” said the cowbird. “Now, shut your beaks!” And with that, she opened her wings and returned to the pasture fence.
    “Did you hear how she insulted me?” squeaked Glynnis. “If I ever so much as see one of her eggs in anybody’s nest, I will peck a hole in it.” She flew up to sit beside the Yellow Warbler.
    “I suppose that’s one solution to the problem,” Pewter dryly commented. “Murder the young.”
    The Yellow Warbler fumed. “First of all, the damned cowbird isn’t hatched yet, and second, the egg has no business in my nest, and last, you fat thing, cute as the baby may be, it will grow up to be as awful as its mother.”
    “You can kill as many cowbird eggs as you like,” said the Tufted Titmouse, ruffling his feathers. He stared downat Sneaky Pie, more interested in another matter entirely. “You really think my name will be changed?”
    “Mine, too?” The Black-crested Titmouse echoed the concern.
    “A presidential candidate is talking about people marrying animals.” Sneaky Pie relayed this with relish. “No woodpecker or titmouse is safe!”
    All the birds screeched, fluttered up, then landed back on their original perches.
    “We must stop the human insanity,” Sneaky pronounced, warming to her subject as she looked up at the bird. They usually fled her company, but now her prey, she held their rapt attention. “None of us wants to marry a human,” said Sneaky.
    “No.” Again, the avian chorus.
    “No, indeed!” chirped the chickadee.
    “But that’s only the beginning,” said Sneaky. “The humans forget that we’re Americans, too. We share these trees, the pastures, the rivers, and the ocean with the humans, right?”
    “Yes,” agreed a chorus of squawks.
    “But the humans are destroying the things we need to live,” continued the tiger cat. “We aren’t destroying their habitat, are we?” asked Sneaky. She didn’t really expect an answer. It was a rhetorical question, to try to get these bird brains thinking. Sneaky wondered for a moment why shebothered. But then, she increasingly enjoyed this public speaking. She scanned her audience.
    An uneasy silence was finally interrupted by one of the iridescent Tree Swallows. “It’s true. We cause them little trouble, and they cause us much. But what’s to be done? They don’t listen to us. They rarely think of us at all.”
    “Some do.” Sneaky Pie admired the shining teal head and wings of the bird, its white underside in bright contrast to its swallowtail coat.
    “Well, they could certainly pay us more attention,” the Tufted Titmouse called.
    “I propose we do something about it,” said Sneaky. “I want to represent us, the
other
citizens of America.” The tiger cat boldly pronounced, “They will hear our voices.”
    Pewter blinked, then whispered to her feline companion, “You’re out of your mind.”
    “How can you possibly get humans to listen?” Glynnis asked, nervous as ever.
    “If you think about it, Pewter and I live with one. It’s a matter of psychology. While they appear to be acting like lunatics, upon study they are surprisingly predictable. We know their ways.”
    “You’re not the only one watching them,” Joe boomed, seemingly affronted. “We see them go in and out all the time, rushing this way and that, though