Unserious postmodern paintings.

The stingray had been invited to tea by mistake — the host, a retired librarian with poor eyesight, had mistaken the brochure…

The xenops had been retconned yesterday—its species, its diet, its very reason for existing rewritten in the margins of a forgotten ornithology…

The goldfinch had been fluorescent for exactly three days, though no one could say when it began. It did not eat, did…

The flamingo had been told it was structurally optimistic, so it believed the beam would hold. It had checked the welds with…

The mesite had been waiting for irony to die. It had watched trends come and go — the memes, the meta-commentary, the…

The egret had been famous for exactly seventeen minutes — a local news crew filmed it stealing a sock from a clothesline,…

The kudu had been promoted three weeks ago to Senior Form Validator, a title it neither sought nor understood. Each morning, it…

The chiffchaff had been mistaken for an intern on its third day and never corrected the error. It attended budget meetings in…

The osprey had been waiting for three days. Not for fish. Not for mates. For the gnome to blink. It had seen…

She had meant to arrive at the garden party by noon, but the bowtie took longer than expected—three attempts, a misplaced pin,…

The puffbird had decided, after three years of contemplation, that excellence was overrated. It had applied for promotion twice, been politely declined…

The cricket had been declared provisionally heroic by the Institute of Minor Anthropods after surviving three days inside a sealed jar labeled…