“I did it!” Brad celebrated his escape after he zipped through the open window on his buzzing fly wings right beneath the noses of his father and brother.
His father uttered a loud curse at the pest’s unexpected exit, but he made the best of the situation by slamming the window closed.
“It won’t get back inside that way,” Jim proclaimed.
Sal gave a smirking agreement as he asked if they could go now.
Jim relented. “We will come back and see your brother another time,” he said.
On the other side of the kitchen window, the once targeted housefly realized that the closed window left it exiled from its home, at least until Mark’s return.
Brad worried as he surveyed the enormous scale of the formerly modest backyard. A barbecue grill and patio table looked like unworldly architecture to the transformed scientist.
A songbird bigger than a T-Rex landed on the back of a patio chair and chirped. Brad didn’t know what sort of songbird, nor did he care.The bird’s feathers looked like scaled armor. The bird’s beak opened, produced another chirp, and flew from the yard in a blur of feathers.
Brad wasn’t at all sorry to see it go. He felt extremely vulnerable and imagined a long list of potential predators willing to snack on something as small and helpless as himself. Other birds, bigger bugs, spiders!
“Don’t panic.” Brad tried to think through his predicament. “At least I am not trapped in the house with my family trying to exterminate me. I just gotta stay calm and wait for Mark.”
He had no way to know the wait might be longer than expected.
Even now, as Brad flew down and came to rest on the patio table, Mark was dealing with car problems. What he had thought at first was a battery problem had cascaded into a complete shutdown of the automobile’s computer system. An increasingly distraught Mark was trying to summon roadside assistance so he could manage the situation and get back home to his transformed spouse.