The first bird ducked its head toward him. Snip! There went another wing.
Jeff, with only one hindwing remaining, looked more like a pre-butterfly caterpillar, just a squirming worm on the ground ready for the monstrous sparrow to finish him off.
"Shoo! Go away!" Barney yelled, bolting out the back door and waving at the two small songbirds hunched on the ground over a near wingless butterfly which the 14-year-old now realized was his brother. The birds, cheated of their morsel, took flight and fled.
Still incapable of communication, Jeff felt great relief when Barney made it plain that he was well aware of Jeff's dilemma. "Looks like I got here just in time," he said. "What in the world were you thinking? Why did you want to be a butterfly?"
Jeff produced the insect equivalent of an inaudible sigh and a tiny shrug that made his one remaining wing flutter as his brother's enormous hand plucked his fuzzy body off the ground.
With tender care, the younger brother carried his butterfly sibling back to Jeff's room and the Chronivac program. Jeff felt immense relief that he was going to regain his human body.
"It's really wild all the stuff this thing can do," Barney said. "Let's find something more exciting than a stupid butterfly."
Wait! This wasn't what he wanted. "Change me back!" Jeff tried to shout.
The teenager chuckled as he read over some of the wilder options. "This could be my chance to be the big brother!" Barney noted.
Jeff wished that, if he had to be an insect, he had become a bee. At least that way he could sting Barney and get his attention.
Barney studied the controls that could make Jeff younger or merely shrink him down in size.
"I've always wanted a dog, too," Barney said.