Day 7.
This one is called Over Coronado.
By the time this illustration takes place, Pico had been loose for about six hours.
He had discovered several things about the world above six feet. First: it was large. Second: it was occupied. Crows with opinions. Hawks with agendas. Seagulls who didn’t care about anything, which was somehow the most unsettling of the three. And somewhere over Coronado, a pair of red-fronted Amazons who looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language — which, from their perspective, he was.
Pico wanted to come home. We didn’t know that yet. We were still in the early stages of panic.
He had never flown above about six feet in his life. The Coronado Bridge was considerably higher than six feet. The San Diego skyline was off to his left. The bay was below him. Everything was enormous and none of it was his living room.
So he did the only thing that made sense.
He got loud.
Not strategic loud. Not I am signaling for help loud. Just loud — the full-throated, indignant, why is no one fixing this loud that only a bird who has never had a problem he couldn’t screech his way out of can produce.
It didn’t work. Nobody in Coronado speaks Ocean Beach Amazon.
He kept flying.
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Come back tomorrow for Day 8.
— Stooge