Miknoot’s Magic

Short fiction: 8 minute read

Steller’s jays are members of the family corvidae. Their cousins, ravens, are known to create a unique vocalization to denote each individual. In other words, they have names. Steller’s jays also have highly complex vocalizations. It is believed that they, like ravens, mate for life.

Miknoot entered the World just last spring. It happened by magic. That is to say, her parents built a sturdy nest of mud and twig and root. Miknoot’s mother then created three perfect ovals. When the time was right, she laid them in the nest, beautiful turquoise eggs with brown speckles.

Inside one of the eggs, Miknoot was forming her body. She started out quite unrecognizable. Gradually, however, with the passing of 16 sunsets into darkness and the rising of 16 dawns up through the pale blue early morning fog, she became increasingly aware of herself as self.

The food that came with her on her journey within the egg had finally run out. The confines of her shell began to seem small. Miknoot felt a new feeling. She longed to stretch her wings. So one day, she decided it was time to leave her shell.

It was an arduous task. Hard to peck when there is barely room to move your head. But peck she did, using all her strength. Her tiny beak tore the shell’s resilient membrane and hammered at its chalky interior until she had made a little hole. A faint light met Miknoot’s eyes for the first time. Curious, she peeked through the little hole out onto the World, which looked like her mother’s wing.

For a time, she rested. But she was determined. She wanted more. More light, more room for her wings, and more food. More of the World. Hours passed as she gained strength and learned how best to break her shell from the inside. With each bit of shell she subtracted, freedom of movement was added. Her mother waited, changing position to settle again lightly over the moving, shifting egg. At last, the shell gave way. With an awkward but exultant testing of new wings, Miknoot was in the World.

Wouldn’t you call that magic? 

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In early fall, at day’s end when the heat subsided and the shadows grew long, Miknoot hunted. She hunted as her parents had taught her to hunt. The pair hovered in the trees close by, observing her progress.

On the moss-covered rocks, she landed lightly. Being a Steller’s Jay, Miknoot could not land any other way but lightly. But Miknoot had a large Voice. “Jeeeewt!” she called, reveling in the sound she produced. And again, “Jeeeewt!” She hopped around the mossy boulder, head cocked, black eyes gleaming, searching.

“Maap-maap,” said Mother, encouraging. That’s right. Just like we showed you, Miknoot.

Again and again Miknoot cried loudly, “Jeeeewt!”

The moss of the rock sheltered grubs, someone else’s young deposited there for safekeeping. The chubby larvae were hardly inert. Hearing Miknoot’s cries, they scrunched their little segments and clambered, tiny legs moving all together, burrowing deeper into the moss. They burrowed as deep as they could go, down into the moss’s thirsty rhizomes, down close to the rock. There it was still cool, despite the day’s heat. Though they preferred the warmth of the surface, the grubs knew to hide from Miknoot.

“Jeeeewt!” called Miknoot. “Jeeeewt! Jeeeewt!”

All this clamor roused the interest of a gray squirrel. Up she popped, imperious, flicking the luxurious fluff of her tail indignantly. She suspected Miknoot of stealing from her cache of nuts, themselves stolen from the feeder where Miknoot got her breakfast in the dew-clad early hours of the day. The squirrel bounded vehemently over to Miknoot’s hunting grounds. She rushed at her and forced her to take flight. And so Miknoot flew, her blue wings velvety in the evening light, to the safety of a nearby fir tree.

But the gray squirrel soon learned that not everything was about her. Miknoot, she realized, was seeking her own, foreign sort of food. In two agile leaps, the squirrel was back into the trees attending to her business, which was undeniably important.

“Jeeeewt!” cried Miknoot, “Jeeeewt!” She was getting tired of calling. “Muckamuckamucka,” she said quietly, as if to herself. It might have been frustration.

“Maap-maap, meep-meep-meep,” urged her parents patiently. And softly, in a voice you’d never hear if you weren’t very close by, they added in fluid tones, “galyoo-galyoop-galyoo.”

“Jeeeewt!” Miknoot shouted as loud as she could shout. And finally all her bluster met with success. With her head turned to the side, allowing one glittering dark eye to watch for activity in the moss, she spied movement: a grub fleeing the sound of her calls.

SNAP! Miknoot snatched it up, lightening quick. She swallowed it whole, its delicious fattiness more evident to her body as nourishment than to her tongue as flavor. How she loved grubs! After this, she got the hang of it. Testing the limits of her large Voice, she managed to keep the larvae on their tiny toes for a good while, as the shadows continued to stretch over the big rocks. “Jeeeewt! Jeeeewt!” SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

In the end, Miknoot ate no fewer than two dozen of the plump, wriggling treats. Then, with a full belly, she flew to the trees to boast to her friends and family of her newfound prowess. There she would sleep until first light, nestled near her parents, puffed against the early fall chill, safe in the strong embrace of tall firs.

---

All the cold, wet winter Miknoot hunted and foraged for herself, but she did not stray far from her family. Then, as January slipped soggily into February, another young jay like herself began to make his presence known. Miknoot was already acquainted with him. They had grown up near to one another. Their families had mobbed hawks, warned one another of bobcats, shared the location of new food sources, and announced when the feeder was being filled.

Now, he approached her with new interest.

He flicked his fancy crest and ruffled his bright blue feathers, showing off their dusky black banding. Very pretty. His eyes flashed as he hopped and turned, dancing — to impress Miknoot.

She was aware that he was almost as good at getting grubs as she, and that he knew the locations of all the squirrels’ nut caches. He could remember a nut cache better than the squirrels themselves. And he would fly far away, to where the dense firs gave way to pasture and sparse oaks, to the places where their cousins the big black crows made their homes. He would watch them in secret, with an expert eye, and learn where their caches were, too. Miknoot had become an excellent hunter, but he was a better thief.

As February drifted toward March, the rains still came, but the days grew longer and warmer. She and her friend spent many hours together. She liked him. He would bring her nuts, demonstrating his skill. At dawn, they had long conversations. About what, only they know.

They made a game of comparing hawk calls to see whose call could scatter more doves. In the evening, they ate at the feeder together, stealing sunflower seeds from one another and hiding them, playing little tricks to show who was more clever. She liked him a lot.

As March ascended into April, Miknoot felt a new feeling. She and her friend began to gather mud and twig and root. For weeks they worked side by side, assembling the materials into a sturdy nest.

As the crocus flowers bowed their withering heads to the ground and the daffodils pushed proudly through the dark soil and formed their fat, greenish-yellow buds, the couple surveyed their work. It sat about 10 feet from the ground, tucked neatly into the mossy crook of a mid-sized oak at the very edge of the forest. Miknoot hopped all around it, examining it from every angle, tilting her head this way and that to get a better view. She stood on its edge and peered in. She hopped into its snug cup and settled. She hopped out again.

“Maap-mapp!” she told him. “Maap-maap.” It was a fine nest! For first-timers, they had done well. For a day or so they rested, savoring their success. At nights, they slept touching, a single puff of blue on the rugged fir-bough roost.

One morning, after the group conversations had finished, when she was stuffed with nuts from the feeder, and small flies stolen from a spider’s web, and little stones for her crop, Miknoot flew to her nest. Her body told her that it was time. She settled once more into the well-insulated cradle the couple had so carefully constructed.

She ruffled her feathers.

There in the gnarled arms of the oak, Miknoot drew upon her magic. She brought into being a perfect oval, her first beautiful turquoise egg with brown speckles. Inside it, a new life was beginning her journey into the World.

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Photo by Leon Pauleikhoff

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