”You know, I could swear I head that bird talking. I must be nuts.”

<Gee, really?! Do you think?! Hold my breath?!> Tobias managed to respond.

<He must be okay. He’s still capable of being sarcastic.>

<I’m a freak of nature, Rachel. Any day I stay alive is a good day for me.>

We were in a church. I was a 7-foot tall creature with horns and a spiked tail holding a pitchfork. And I was in a church.

I looked at the altar. I looked at the terrified priest who was shaking so badly he couldn’t cross himself.

<Sorry,> I said to the priest. <It’s not what it looks like. Sorry,> I added, looking at the altar. <Boy, is this the wrong morph in the wrong place.>

”I think I like you better as a chicken, Tobias.”

<Professor Plum did it in the conservatory with the candlestick!>

Tobias was alive. But he must have hit fairly hard. He seemed to be reliving a game of Clue...<Miss Scarlet? Was it Miss Scarlet with the plum in the professor?> Tobias wondered.

<I have this slight tendency to wake up when big, blue, scorpion-tailed alien centaurs go crashing around in the woods like a herd of ruptured elephants.>

<How did you get a quarter for the phone?>

<With these eyes? Coins shine in the sunlight. You fly around outside coin-op Laundromats or the drive-through lane at a McDonald’s, you’ll find a dropped quarter sooner or later.>

Rachel laughed...<You are the world champion of coping with weird situations,> she said.

<A gun! A gun? This kid has a gun?!?> I yelped.

From far off I heard, <Actually, Miss Scarlet, I think you should have used the wrench.>

<Well, I saw two Chee projecting tree holograms, and another one trying to pass himself off as a rock, but nothing to worry about.>

<Are you always this nice about being a Peeping Tom?>

<I am never a Peeping Tom...I cannot use my superpowers for evil.>

”Safe as a dead person can be,” Marco said.

<Who’s safer than a dead person?>

<I’m sideways. I’m sideways on a smooth, damp surface I think was white. And there’s a big lake below me.>

We all considered that description for a moment.

<Oh, man,> Marco yelled. <Tobias, you’re in a toilet!>

<Is she in there?> I asked.

<No, it’s after midnight, so naturally she’s out in the yard playing Hacky Sack,> Tobias snipped.

<Rachel, in case you haven’t noticed, our lives stopped making sense that day we walked through the construction site and had a spaceship land in front of us...>

<How exactly do you program a computer to kiss butt like that?>

”Geez, now a hawk, too?” a cop yelled. “What is this, When Animals Attack?”

<Oh! Oh! Fried chicken!> Marco said. <Hey, Tobias. If a seagull eats chicken, is that like cannibalism or something?>

<Jake? Rachel? Is anyone else here, or am I the only one watching George Freaking Washington climbing into a boat?>

<Hey, he was cute,> Tobias called down from the sky.

”Oh, shut up, you mouse-eating freak,” I said.

Tobias laughed...<I heard that! Heard what he called you, too. The guy is perceptive as well as cute.>

And off we went. A red-tailed hawk and a bald eagle riding the roof of a cop car, wings open, beaks forward, talons straining to take the pressure.

<Now this doesn’t look too strange!>

Tobias was back on his feet, arms crossed over his chest, looking on calmly. “You two guys may want to step back out of the way, because I don’t think Davis here is going to be having a very good day.”

Sometimes I wonder if the truth is that I’m some lunatic. I wonder if in reality I’m a hopeless, raving madman locked in an asylum, merely imagining that I am a hawk.

<Unusual is our middle name.>

<Diurnal? Have you tried Kaopectate?>

Tobias laughed. “Hey, the chicks go wild for the feathers, bay-beee.” He laughed again. “Sorry, Ax had Austin Powers on his TV last night.”

”Tense. Very tense. Too many high-caffeine mice.”