Unserious postmodern paintings.

The dollarbird had spent seventeen years trying to be exceptional at perching. It studied posture manuals, attended weekend workshops on avian stillness,…

The skua had been waiting for the tea to cool since 3:14 a.m., convinced that if it stared long enough, the steam…

The taipan had been sold for $12.99 at a roadside reptile stand labeled 'Tragically Affordable,' a bargain so steep it came with…

Having stepped back from active display seasons, the widowbird now occupies its time auditing nest-construction expenses and correcting grammatical errors in old…

The petrel had been a seabird, then a metaphor, then a footnote in a taxonomy textbook no one read. Yesterday, it was…

The coelacanth had not moved in seventeen hours. It had stopped asking why it was still alive after 65 million years of…

The mesite had been invited to tea by the colonel’s aunt, who insisted on manners above all else. It had practiced the…

The gopher had been elected provisional hero by a unanimous vote of three worms and a confused beetle after it accidentally blocked…

The musk ox had once been part of a herd that migrated across tundras now buried under shopping malls. It remembered the…

The moorhen had been waiting for the librarian to return with the worm-shaped bookmark it had requested three Tuesdays ago. It did…

The pelican had been promoted to Senior Synergy Liaison after demonstrating exceptional capacity for vertical integration during the Great Tuna Consolidation. It…

He had been punctual for forty-seven years, not by choice but by habit so deep it had become physics. Each morning, he…