The bird sanctuary was open for another twenty minutes when they arrived.
“I volunteered here last semester. I can show him around,” Ramon told the chesty brunette at the front gate.
They walked among cages filled with injured birds; blinded hawks, owls with broken wings and cormorants with missing limbs from being caught in fishing lines. Brandon stopped at a cage that held a solitary great blue heron. The bird was stunning up close, nearly four feet tall, his black eye outlined with bright yellow skin, his topknot a dramatic set of black and white feathers. As they watched, the heron twisted its head to gaze at the blue sky. In a flurry of beating wings, a smaller heron landed atop the chicken wire of the cage and dropped a still-thrashing small fish inside. The big heron gobbled it u
