Perseus Middleman

Mr. Feathers was on one of his "alone time" flights. Being around humans all day tried his patience. But these little sojourns into the great blue yonder left him with a feeling of great serenity. He loathed the constant babbling that the crew engaged in; it lacked the intellectual stimulus that he craved. Then there were the antics they indulged in. How they thought themselves to be more highly evolved was beyond him.

Take that character, he thought to himself as he began his descent to the ship. He's standing on the deck waving his arms in the air. He's looking in my direction; he's waving at me; he's got crackers in his hands.

This was going to take some precision flying. What Mr. Feathers was about to attempt was daring. He was going to try to snatch both crackers as the victim's hands crossed during the mid-wave point. He had to calculate the speed of descent, the angle of approach and the available pull away distance.

He banked two degrees to his right and began the dive. He focussed on the crackers. Mr. Feathers was an expert flyer; after all, he was a bird. But he was a bird with a cracker fixation and that spelt disaster. His eyes followed one of the crackers and his careful approach ended as he thudded into Perseus' chest.

"Give me that cracker!"
"Get off my chest first!"
"No, cracker first!"
"Do I have to remind you that I am much bigger than you?"
"Do I have to remind you that I have talons?"
"Arrrggghh!" Perseus winced as the bird's claws pierced his robes. "Here's the cracker, now get off!"

Mr. Feathers fluttered off to his perch, chomping away at the cracker.
Perseus pulled himself upright and dusted a few shed feathers from his clothes.

"What kind of landing do you call that?"
"I call that a 'soft' landing."
"What was soft about it?"
"You were!"
"Anyway forget all of that, we need to talk."
"Oh, so that's why you were standing on the deck waving food like a madman."
"Crackers."
"Alright, waving food like you were crackers." Squawk! Squawk!

There it was again, that bird laugh that so infuriated Perseus. It was the bird's sense of humour that kept him from talking to Mr. Feathers more often.

"If we could be serious for a moment. How would you like some more crackers."
Mr. Feathers stopped laughing. Perseus had clearly hit upon a winning bargaining position. "I'm a parrot! Of course, I want crackers!"
"Then I think we can do some business."
"What do you want?"
Perseus explained his plan to the bird. There was a lot of nodding culminating with Perseus producing a tray of crackers that he tipped into the bowl on the perch.