White-faced Ibis   Northern Colorado                            click to enlarge

May 8th 6:07 PM. I had been hired by a small bird refuge in Florida to ascertain the where abouts of a certain White-faced Ibis and her brood. She had skipped out without paying her food tab and the refuge wanted their moola. Why any bird refuge would go to these lengths to collect on a food bill was beyond me but then I was just a flat-footed gumshoe with a camera in his hand and a need to feed my habit of taking pictures, and I didn’t need to know everything. I was just there to find the bird, take her picture and collect my 40 simoleons. Forty simoleons doesn’t sound like much but when you’re down on your luck you’ll do a lot of things for not much money. Besides I was getting low on pixels and needed to fill my cards up.

When I did my initial interview with the director of the refuge, a short little rat-faced weasel with too tight shoes and a comb-over I found out a few of the facts I needed to know to start this job. The first was this guy needed to brush his teeth, his breath smelled like burning tires and unfortunately he had to open his mouth to talk and that made matters even worse, if they could be. He also needed to change his ” I ♥ Ibis ” t-shirt, too much of his pasty skin was showing. It didn’t help that there were what looked like Ibis feathers stuck in his teeth. Who licenses these places anyway I asked myself, but then I thought about the dough and moved upwind.

The second fact was more useful. It seems that this particular Ibis had a limp. A very pronounced limp and she was traveling with her two off-spring who were following in Mom’s every footstep. Both of them had records going back to when they were eggs. Petty theft, missing school, selling slightly used crustaceans to the younger ibis, some sordid behavior with a juvenile spoonbill, the list went on and on. No wonder they were on the lam. Every bird refuge in southern Florida wanted these three. It began to make sense that they were up here in the backwaters of Northern Colorado.

I got my first break in the case when I was going into town one rainy overcast day. I needed smokes, I didn’t smoke but we’re required to carry them in case some sultry dame with long red hair, gams that go up to there, and knowing eyes asked us for one. It ‘s part of the gumshoe code. My warning light came on to tell me I was low on gas. Great, the 40 clams promised by ratzo the Ibis lover hadn’t come in yet, so much for the checks in the mail bit, I was out of smokes, low on gas and all I’d had to eat in the last three days were a can of anchovies, a few soggy saltines and some grey stuff I found on the top shelf of the fridge. I was feeling so low that whale shit looked like star-dust. I missed Angie too. She wasn’t much of a secretary, my girl Thursday, but she could make a mean enchilada. And the fact that she had curves in all the right places didn’t hurt, much. She knew how to make a man feel good though and that’s a skill that is worth its weight in gold. I let her down as is my habit with women, I answered her truthfully when she asked me if those fishnets made her butt look big. I should have lied to her. That’s another part of the gumshoes code. Lie to them if you have to. Women want it, hell they need it. I was sinking fast.

I was thinking real hard about whether I should just dump this lousy crate into the bar ditch and put it and me out of misery when I noticed three dark shapes moving amongst the marsh grass. What the hell, I thought, could they be Ibis and then swear to god, they were. White-faced Ibis looking for food in all the wrong places. I couldn’t believe it, was I gonna get a break here or what. I wasn’t close enough to see if any of them were limping, so cutting across two lanes of traffic and one very large Navajo freightliner, luckily both his horn and his brakes worked, I pulled up to where I could see them better. They didn’t see me, Ibis don’t look in truck windows. There it was, she was limping, I could hardly breathe. She looked exactly as I expected her to, the kids had a few new tattoos but otherwise they fit the bill, I had them. All I needed was a picture.

I reached for my trusty Nikon D700 with its 80-400 VRII image stabilizing lens and quickly checked its settings, this was no time to screw things up by not having my crap together. I always carry my gear with me, my camera and lens are my bread & butter, I couldn’t live without them. They’re to me what the splits are to VanDamme, what wide teeth are to a game show host, what cleavage is to Sophia Veraga, well you get the picture. When Angie left she took the big screen, the microwave, my socks, the front floor pads out of my truck but she didn’t touch my gear. I guess there might be a small amount of human kindness left in that black chunk of basalt she calls a heart. Then I thought nah, she just missed them.

Just as I was ready to squeeze off a shot a car with Florida plates comes skidding to a stop, two idiots dressed like it was Plaid day at the senior center jump out with point and shoot cameras and flash those birds right in their little red eyes. Then before I could even get out my stun gun out to give a friendly birders welcome to those bozos the Ibis were gone. All I heard was one warning squawk and the hard flapping of wings and the marsh was empty again. When the rage cleared and I was able to locate the three they were just specks in the sky heading north along the foothills. The Hyundai the two intruders were driving was slowly wobbling after them, I must have luckily been able to slash their rear tire as they went by. They’d be able to follow my birds until the tire came off the rim then they’d be off-line for a while. Mad, sure I was, mad as a blind potato farmer with a dull shovel, but I wasn’t out of the game. I had a hunch where those three birds were going and it wasn’t Disney world. It was a much cooler place, a place where they could blend in with other white-faced Ibis and disappear.

They were going to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and so was I.

To be continued……