The Superior Ibis

Stories for Another Day

In a group of trees on the edges of a broad wetland there lived a flock of ibises, birds with long legs and even longer beaks in the shape of a reaching hook. Their feathers were a kind of dirty white, with straggling grey and black tail feathers. They were busy birds, always scratching and foraging in the dirt and the mud. At night they roosted in the trees like big bundles of wet washing.

Sometimes the ibises scuffled among themselves over a tasty crab or a plump root, and sometimes they helped each other out, sharing their nests if it rained and looking after each other’s chicks when they needed to go and get food. But one day all that changed.

A new ibis named Sissy, who was someone or other’s cousin or niece, came to live in the wetland. She was no less ugly than any of the other ibises, with their wrinkly, sunken eyes and their scrawny feet, but she spent hours every day grooming her feathers so that they lay flat and smooth, and she was always bobbing her head in and out of the mud, so her beak looked black and satiny from the wet mud clinging to it. She even painted her toes red with strawberry juice.

When she stood in the mud, the little crabs with their red claws came out of their holes and clustered around her, thinking that her toes were other little crabs, so she had plenty to eat, and before long, other ibises clustered around her as well. Two particular ibises were always hanging around her, Enid and Edie. Whatever Sissy said, Enid and Edie repeated it after her, and giggled.

“Who does she think she is?” one of the other birds, whose name was Soupy, said to his friend, Doddle.

Doddle, who was busy trying to pull up a particularly fat mangrove root, said, “Who?”

Soupy said, “Sissy, you know, the one with the shiny beak. You know they’ve started bringing her the fattest crabs and the biggest fish.”

“Have they?” said Doddle. He really didn’t care what the other birds were doing, so long as he had enough to eat every day, and a dry nest to sleep in.

“And they’re building her her own nest, lined with down feathers. It’s up high, so she can look down on the rest of us,” Soupy said, in a disgusted voice.

“Okay,” Doddle said. He gave an extra-hard tug and the root plopped out. He carried it off to eat it, and Soupy followed him, hoping for a share, still shaking his head over Sissy.

Before too long, Enid and Edie were saying that the ibises should make Sissy their queen.

“What do we want a queen for?” Soupy said.

“Because she’s so beautiful,” said Edie. “She raises the tone of the whole flock. I’m sure the other birds all look up to us now.”

“What does a queen do?” Soupy asked suspiciously.

“She sits on a throne,” Enid said. “Everyone does what she says.”

“I don’t want anyone telling me what to do,” Soupy said, stubbornly.

Sissy opened her glossy beak and said, “I don’t want to be anyone’s queen if they don’t want me to be.”

“If they don’t want her to be!” Edie and Enid said, giggling.

Soupy argued, “Why do we need a queen, anyway?”

“Well, if you have to ask…” Sissy said, rolling her eyes.

“If you have to ask!” Enid repeated, and giggled.

“…then you wouldn’t understand, even if I told you,” Sissy finished and strolled off, clicking her red toenails on the ground.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Edie said, and giggled.

Soon everyone started calling her Queen Sissy. Some of them even started to bob their heads whenever she went past. If it rained, Enid and Edie spread their wings over her to keep the rain off, and if it was hot, they stood one on each side and fanned her with their wings. She sat in her special nest, high above everyone else’s, and gave orders like, “Tell everyone to be quiet, I’m having a nap.” Then Enid and Edie would fuss about, making sure she was comfortable and shushing anyone who came near.

Then, as they always did, the big rains came. Doddle started ferrying the eggs and the newly-hatched young to safer nests, up high in the big trees on the other side of the wetlands. Back and forth he went, carrying them in his beak, while the rain came down, heavier and heavier.

Enid and Edie squawked to Sissy, “What should we do? The water’s rising!”

“You should spread your wings wider,” Sissy snapped. “I’m getting wet!”

The rains came down more heavily than ever before. The water rose higher and higher. Nests that had been built in the lower branches of the trees were swept away. Soupy and the other ibises shouted, “What should we do? You’re our queen – tell us what to do!”

Sissy started to get worried. “Save me! Save your queen!” she squawked. After eating all the fattest crabs and the biggest fish, she was almost too heavy to fly.

“Save our queen!” Enid and Edie screeched, dancing about in a panic.

“Help us! Help us!” Soupy and the others cried. “The water is washing our nests away, and our eggs!” They squawked and flapped about in confusion. But some of them saw Doddle flying back and forth steadily through the rain, carrying eggs to safety, and they flew off to do the same thing.

“Doddle, help us!” Soupy yelled.

Doddle looked back and said, “You don’t need my help. Just fly to the big trees on the other side of the wetland.”

Soupy lifted his wings, flapping hard against the heavy rain, and set off. Enid and Edie watched him go and shrieked even more loudly, “Don’t leave us! Help us!”

Soupy yelled back to them, “You need to leave now, or the water will be up to your feet!”

They stopped crying and sniffling and pulled themselves together and flew off to the bigger trees. Sissy was left sitting in her downy nest at the top of her tree.

“You there,” she ordered Doddle, “come and lift me up!”

Doddle flew up grimly, and helped her out of the nest. Together they flew slowly across the floodwaters to the high trees on the other side. When they landed, Sissy’s feathers were sodden. Her beak was dull and wet, and her toenails had lost their shiny red paint. The other ibises hardly noticed her. They were too busy sorting out their new nests and checking their eggs.

“Humph! You people don’t deserve me for a queen!” Sissy said sulkily. She turned her back and sat there by herself with rain dripping off her beak.

Enid and Edie turned to Doddle and said, “You saved us all, Doddle! You should be our king!”

“Yes,” said Soupy. “You should be our king!”

Doddle said, “You’ve got to be kidding. Who’s got time to be a king?” And he flapped away.