100Deaths - My Challenge Stories

The Death of Hopper

A/N: Who is Hopper, you may ask? I'm not entirely sure. He was a bird who was born was spring on my porch, but unfortunately, before he learned to fly, he fell out of his nest. He hopped around my house before he disappeared. I like to think he taught himself to fly and flew away, but... it's highly improbable.

    A small, vulnerable fledgling quickly stumbled over his clumsy feet, trying to get around a large bush. The humans had put him in a makeshift nest the night before, but he decided to get out, accidentally falling down a few large steps before landing on the unnaturally hard white ground with a cold silver patch in the middle. He innocently wondered if the grass was sick to be such a color. He'd stayed hidden near the bush for a while -- until a small human came along. He wasn't entirely sure if the human was trying to help or kill him, so he ran away (or attempted to).
His mother had abandoned them a few days earlier out of fear of the humans. His larger brothers were determined to dominate the nest, and being so small compared to them, he didn't hold out for long. Now, as he quivered beneath another bush that was apparently behind the first bush, he thought of... well, not really much anything. What does a bird think about, worry about, ponder, and a baby at that? No one knows. I suppose Hopper may have been concerned about food, for they do have survival instincts.
Now, his mother, while she was there, had spoken of great horrors -- canines, cats, men, all the harbingers of death. He hoped not to encounter any in his life.  It would probably be a terrifying experience. Hopper, being so awfully young, did not yet fully grasp the idea of 'death'. What was dead? How could you leave life?
Destiny, apparently, had decided that the only way to understand this idea was to experience it firsthand. Destiny has a cruel way of teaching things.
So, as that little fledgling, small and vulnerable, slipped into sleep, he never saw the fox coming, nor did he ever see anything ever again.

~//II\\~

Hopper
Death by Fox