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Attack the Keeper

Pinion shook with rage but saw that the human visitors couldn't, or wouldn't, understand what was wrong. It honked in frustration and stalked over to the far corner of the cage, away from the humans and the other flamingos so it could have space to think and to plan.

If it couldn't rally the visitors then it would have to change this situation itself. It looked at the storks, who weren't paying the flamingo enclosure any attention at this moment, and remembered that there were times when they threatened their own keeper.

It had never seen them attack a human successfully, and the keeper always seemed to know how to discourage them, but what if Pinion attacked its own keeper? Could it catch the human unawares?

🦩

It waited for the evening feeding. The sun passed across the sky and the light began to turn the familiar rose-gold of evening. The human tourists thinned out from crowds to a trickle, and eventually stopped coming entirely.

Then the keeper came in with its usual bucket of food to spread throughout the cage.

That was Pinion's moment. As the keeper entered the cage the flamingo rushed it, its wings spread wide to make it look big, its neck out straight and honking with rage.

The keeper looked surprised, and for a moment (and to Pinion's vast satisfaction), alarmed! It used the bucket to shield itself from Pinion's attack.

Pinion caught up with it, clashed breast-first against the bucket, and followed up its attack by kicking at the human's legs. It honked as loud as it could, a tirade of noise to scare the human away.

The human backed up a few steps. "What's up with you?" it asked.

Pinion didn't know or care what it had said, only turned to shout to the rest of the flock for support. "Come on! If we call attack like this we can win!"

Not a single one of its flock-mates joined the charge.


...ohhhh dear, oh dear. Pinion's put himself out there for sure, and we all know what they say about he who dares, but maybe this one didn't quite work out. What do you want Pinion to do next?

- Try to convince Langoustine to take revenge on the humans?
- Try to convince the flock as a whole that the wing-trimming is wrong?