Plumage Read Online Free PDF

to after a moment, but without putting down her book. A bright yellow budgie greeted Racquel from its cover.
    â€œ The Complete Book of Parakeets ,” Racquel read aloud, sitting down. The other books, she saw, were Budgies As Pets, The Fact Finder Book of Parrots and Parakeets, Parakeets: A Pet Owner’s Manual , and so on down the stack.
    Sassy said, “You would not believe how many colors of parakeet there are.” She flipped through her book, reciting. “Green. Yellow. Blue. Aquamarine, violet, pastel, albino, pied.” She was growing round-eyed, her small hands clawing at the pages. “Shell markings. No shell markings. Lacewing. Lutino. Opaline, fallow, greywing, cinnamon, crested. And not one of them—” Sassy slapped the book shut and slammed it down. “Not one of them looks the least bit like that one.” Her forefinger stabbed the air.
    Racquel turned and looked where Sassy was pointing. On a tree limb not far away, the hotel’s parakeet-in-residence perched, watching.
    Racquel felt her own eyebrows pucker, puzzled. “You need to know what kind it is?” she asked.
    A pause. Then, “I guess not really,” Sassy mumbled. Racquel turned back to look at her; Sassy looked sheepish. “I guess I kind of got sidetracked into that.”
    Racquel scanned the stack of books and grinned. “You’re obsessed,” she said. “I like that in a person.”
    â€œI, uh, I was really trying to find out—”
    â€œDoes this happen often?” Racquel pursued her teasing. “Do you indulge, like, an obsession of the week?”
    Finally Sassy smiled. “The people at the library probably think so.”
    â€œWhy? What else you been reading?”
    â€œI don’t know.” She shrugged. “Art history, folklore, trees, Tasmania, whatever. I just sort of browse one section at a time.”
    Racquel sat back, impressed. “You’re educated,” she said.
    â€œNo, I’m not.” Sassy blinked at her, eyes pallid behind her glasses; Sassy needed to start using mascara. Even with the gray hair, she wouldn’t look half so plain if she put on some makeup. “I got married right out of high school.”
    â€œYou don’t call twenty-seven years of reading everything in sight an education?”
    â€œI, uh, no, not really …” Sassy blinked harder and changed the subject. “What I was trying to find out was how to catch that parakeet. But all it says is wait until night, turn off all the lights, and sneak up on it with a flashlight. That’s not going to work.”
    Racquel made a show of studying the parakeet perched seventy feet in the air. “Not unless you got wings,” she said.
    â€œIn which case it would be no problem anyway. I’d just out-fly it. Hey.” Sassy brightened. “Maybe I could hire a falcon.”
    â€œWhat do you want to catch it for?”
    â€œUh …” All of a sudden Sassy jumped up, scraping her books together. “I got to get back to work,” Sassy muttered, not looking at Racquel. Sassy fled.
    â€œHuh!” Peering after Sassy, Racquel noticed that the parakeet also was following the little woman with its gaze.
    Reporting to work a couple of days later, Sassy carried in each apron pocket a Peterson Field Guide, one for the Eastern United States and one for the Rocky Mountain States. If she’d had more pockets she probably would have brought along Central America too.
    Servicing hotel rooms, spreading clean sheets, she yawned and wanted to lie down on the beds, because she had sat up late studying Birds of the World ; she had gotten only four hours of sleep. Oddly, this made her feel mellow, as if she were swimming in a heated pool. She had never before stayed up so late just because she wanted to. Always before, Frederick had wanted her to go to bed when he did, although not usually for any enjoyable purpose.
    Because Sassy had