#19: Birdhouse
19. Birdhouse- Drill a hole in the top and hang it from a tree with duct tape. Fill it with twigs, sticks, leaves. Then, the birds will come and you can name one Star, so it will be a Star bird.
The Ghost crew awoke one morning to hear Chopper beeping, screeching, and warbling over the intercoms. Hera peered sleepily out of her cabin, not pleased to be disturbed from one of her rare moments of sleep to check on her crew.
"Chopper, what is going on?" Ezra yelled from across the hall, his hair standing up in every possible direction. From inside their cabin, Zeb growled and muttered threats directed toward the unruly astromech.
At the same time, Sabine charged out the door of her cabin with a vibroblade in one hand and one of her Westar 35s in the other. Checking the hall for danger, she saw nothing but her crewmates. The Mandalorian slowly moved to holster her weapons, only to realize she had no holsters, as she was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants and not her armor.
Suddenly, Chopper burst through the door heading from the common room and began speeding down the hallway as fast as his wheels could carry him. Apparently, this was not enough, because he soon activated his rocket booster, flew out of the hallway and into the cockpit. Just before he closed and locked the door behind him, he beeped out one last phrase.
"What does that mean?" Ezra asked, unable to understand binary.
"He said…'Run, it's coming for us?'" Sabine translated, confused. "What is that supposed to mean?"
A crashing sound echoed down the hallway, coming from the common room. "What is that?" Hera asked. The sound became increasingly more deafening, and then an unidentified flying object came flying across the hallway and straight into the door of the cockpit, which was closed. The creature then fell to the ground after its collision with the metal door.
Ezra ran up to the creature, which seemed to be out cold. "Hey, it's a bird, like the one that always followed Ahsoka around."
"A convor," Sabine specified.
"Except it's really tiny. Maybe it's a baby convor," Ezra commented. Suddenly, the convor sat up, snapped its beak at his finger, and flew off. "Ah, it bit me!" Ezra screeched. Zeb laughed at him from the other end of the hallway.
"What do we do now?" Sabine asked. "Chopper is obviously terrified of it."
"Just leave it be," Hera said. "It'll find its way out of the ship on its own after we get out of hyperspace." The Spectres bid each other goodnight and headed back to their respective cabins.
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The next day, Zeb, Ezra, and Sabine were sitting at the table in the galley eating Dantooine cereal. Meanwhile, Hera was typing up a report on her datapad in the common room while Kanan meditated on the floor beside her. Ezra tried to show off to his crewmates by using the Force to pour blue milk into his Frosted Space O's cereal, but his crewmates proceeded to ignore his antics. Out of nowhere, they heard a loud shriek and looked up, reaching for their weapons.
The baby convor barreled through the common room and into the galley. Zeb and Sabine grabbed their bowls of cereal protectively, but Ezra was too busy pouring blue milk with the Force. The convor dove towards his bowl of cereal, grabbed it in its talons, and fled.
"Hey!" Ezra shouted, spilling the carton of blue milk onto his orange jumpsuit. "That's my breakfast!" He jumped up from the table to chase after it, as Sabine and Zeb laughed at him. Ezra charged out of the galley and into the common room, following the breakfast-stealing convor.
"What's wrong, Ezra?" Hera asked, concerned, as he burst into the common room at full speed and looked around frantically.
"The bird!" he replied. "It stole my cereal!"
"Just get some more cereal, Ezra," Hera suggested. "Don't bother the poor thing; it's probably just hungry."
"But…but…" Ezra protested, angry at the bird for embarrassing him and causing him to spill the blue milk.
"Just go change and get another bowl," said Kanan with a smirk. "No use crying over spilled blue milk."
Ezra sighed at the lame joke and went to his cabin to change clothes.
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After breakfast, Sabine returned to her cabin to continue painting her mural of one of Attolon's remarkable sunsets. She was just beginning to blend the colors when she heard a clunking sound coming from the ventilation shafts above her. The Mandalorian stopped painting and listened, but she did not hear the sound again. Thirty minutes later, she took a break to admire how her work had turned out so far. She pulled out her holo camera to take a picture of her progress, when an unidentified something fell out of the vents. Before she could react, it flew across the room and headed straight for Sabine's painting.
"No!" Sabine yelled, but it was too late. The bird collided with the wall and stuck to it, its feathers coated with paint. The convor flapped its soggy wings, trying to escape, but it only smeared the painting more. Finally, gravity won, and bird, now soaked in paint the colors of a pastel sunset, fell to the ground with an odd squishing sound. Sabine stared in horror at the remains of her once beautiful painting, which had suddenly become just a smear of colors complete with clusters of feathers that had remained stuck to the still wet paint. Before Sabine could capture the bird, it took off into the vents once more, and Sabine hurled her holo camera into the wall in frustration.
The furious teenager stormed out of her cabin. "Hera, that stupid bird ruined my painting!" she yelled angrily, holding one of her blasters in one hand and a feather, which was dripping yellow paint onto the ship's floor, in the other. "Permission to seek and destroy?"
Hera looked up from her report, mildly alarmed at the threatening manner in which Sabine held her blaster. "No, Sabine. Don't go shooting up my ship. We don't need any more blaster holes in the walls than we already have. Leave the bird alone."
Sighing, Sabine returned to her cabin. An entire week's worth of work had been ruined by the stupid convor, and now she was going to have to redo her entire painting.
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Kanan was meditating in the cockpit while he waited for Hera to complete her report. He had been struggling to find his center in the Force with the negative emotions pouring from his Padawan since after breakfast, and now, from the Mandalorian. Most of said negative emotions seemed to be directed at the baby convor that was wreaking havoc on the ship and its residents.
One of the downsides to his Force sight was that closing his eyes did nothing to block out the myriad of distractions on the ship. His fine-tuned senses picked up Chopper's whirring, the humming of the Ghost's engines, rustling in the vents, snoring, footsteps echoing off the metal floors, and even the spray of paint bottles across the ship. He could sense Ezra and Zeb's boredom after being in hyperspace for so long, Sabine's anger at the bird, Hera's frustration with her report, Chopper being, well, Chopper, and the baby convor rustling around in the vents. Well, that was certainly not going to improve his concentration.
He was so intent on tuning out the various noises on the ship that he did not notice the convor fly out of the vent and begin hovering over his head. Suddenly, Kanan felt something drip onto his head. He immediately cringed, not needing to reach up and touch the substance in his hair to know it was bird poop. Sighing, the Jedi got up from his meditation position on the floor and headed to the fresher. He pulled out his comlink and contacted Hera.
He heard her sigh and set down her datapad. "Yes, Kanan?"
"Hera, the bird pooped in my hair."
She laughed. "How did you not notice? Don't worry; in a few more days, we'll be out of hyperspace. I'm sure it'll leave us alone once we get there."
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After enduring Ezra's rants about That Stupid, Greedy Flying Rat That Stole My Cereal, which he had dubbed the baby convor after the morning's incident, Zeb retreated into his cabin in an attempt to find peace and quiet and retain his rapidly dwindling sanity. The Lasat disassembled his Bo-rifle, cleaned it, and put it back together. Once he was done, he opened the cabin door and checked the hallway for bored, ranting Ezras.
One glance up and down the hallway revealed no bright orange teenagers, but Zeb could hear approaching footsteps, so he closed the door quickly. Since he had nothing better to do while being confined to his cabin, the Lasat laid down on his bunk for a nap.
About half an hour into his doze, Zeb felt a strange tapping on the side of his face. He opened one eye and swatted one paw at his ear. The tapping continued. Zeb growled, sat up abruptly, swatted again, and came up with a pawful of feathers.
"That stupid bird!" he growled, walking across the cabin and palming the lights, but it was gone. He stormed out of the cabin, down the hallway, and into the common room. "Hera! Can I take Ezra, a broom, and a hydrospanner and go beat that bird's brains in?"
"No, Zeb," Hera sighed. "Just leave it alone."
"Fine," Zeb replied with a huff.
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Three hours after she initially began her report, Hera turned off her datapad and deposited it triumphantly onto the common room table. "Done!" she announced, getting up from the table and walking to the cockpit to meet Kanan. When she didn't find him there, she took out a hydrospanner and began checking out some faulty wiring.
When Hera was about halfway finished, she heard a screeching and tearing noise. She turned around and looked up to see the convor with a tangle of wires in its beak. Then she saw said tangle of wires fall out of its beak split in two.
"No!" Hera shouted, hurling her hydrospanner across the cockpit. It landed exactly where the bird had been a mere second before and bounced off the wiring. "No, come back, you little rat with wings!" The bird soared up and into the vents yet again. "Alright, that's it! This is war!"
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Five minutes later, the entire Ghost crew had gathered in the common room at Hera's urging. The twi'lek stood in the center of the room, a peeved yet determined expression on her face. "What is this all about, Hera?" Kanan questioned.
The ship's captain cleared her throat and paused for dramatic effect, before uttering two words: "The bird." Silence fell, and her crew stared at her.
"Um, Hera?" Ezra asked tentatively. "Didn't you tell all of us that we should just leave it alone and that it'll fly off when we land back on base?"
Hera paused, glancing at the floor sheepishly. "Well, I suppose I did, but I did not realize how cruel and evil of a creature that…thing…is."
"What did it do?" Sabine asked. "What could be worse than destroying a week's worth of artwork?"
"Or waking me up by pecking my face off?" Zeb added.
"Or stealing my Space O's cereal?" Ezra wailed.
"Or pooping on my head?" Kanan deadpanned. The entire crew, minus Hera, paused and stared at him, dumbfounded as to how that could happen to the Jedi, of all people, until Zeb shattered the silence.
"It…pooped on your head?" he snickered with a grin. The teenagers and Chopper burst out laughing, or, in the droid's case, warbling hysterically.
"Okay, okay. That's enough," Hera placated them, and her crew composed themselves. "All those things the bird did to you were unfortunate, but now, it has done something abominable." The crew waited in suspense. "It chewed on some of the wiring in the Ghost's and destroyed it!"
"Destroyed the wiring or the Ghost?" Sabine asked worriedly.
"Both!" Hera declared. "Well," she corrected herself, "it can still fly, but that Force-cursed bird has still disabled some minor backup systems and controls! This means war!"
"War!" Ezra bellowed, and he, Zeb, and Sabine began stomping around in a circle while chanting what the deemed "war chants."
"Draw your weapons!" Hera ordered, and her crew ran off in all directions.
Hera hurried to the galley and found a frying pan from one of the cabinets. Sabine snatched a bottle of spray paint and the stick she had used for her Darksaber training. Ezra grabbed three stormtrooper helmets, donning one on his head and holding the other two in his hands. Kanan located a broom and a trash can lid, which he brandished like a sword and a shield. Chopper brandished his taser, and Zeb merely hoisted the stool he had been sitting on during Hera's declaration of war meeting.
Once they had assembled back in the common room, Hera issued the order to charge, and the six Spectres went charging through the ship, hunting for the baby convor that had been provoking them all day.
Sabine ran to her cabin, checking her mangled artwork for evil convors, and, finding none, progressed to the cockpit. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the small bird chewing on some of the Ghost's wires. "No! Stop that!" Sabine screeched, spraying her spray paint. The now neon blue bird flew off, squawking, as the Mandalorian swatted at it with her stick. It dodged her attacks and escaped into the vents. "Haar'chack!"
Ezra encountered it next, clattering through the dirty dishes in the galley's sink. He hurled one of his helmets across the room, but the bird flew off at the last second, and the helmet barely missed breaking a glass mug instead. Ezra flung his other projectile, causing a few blue painted feathers to flutter to the ground, but it swooped over his head and dived at his ankles. The Padawan yelped in surprise, aimed a kick at the bird, pulled the helmet off his head, and slung it at the bird. The helmet flew straight at it. In fact, it was such an accurate throw that it landed directly on top of the bird, which flew away, with the helmet still on top of it. When it tried to escape into the vents, it bounced off, since the helmet was too big, so it instead fluttered unsteadily into the common room.
Kanan struck at it with his trash can lid, but that only freed the bird from the vision- and agility-restricting helmet. It flew out of reach, and Kanan barely clipped its foot with the end of his broom. As it soared above his head, he used the Force to enhance his jump. Simultaneously, Zeb charged in from his hiding space under the common room table and launched the bright orange metal stool at his target. Both the Jedi and the stool collided in midair, and the bird flew off, unharmed, as Zeb growled, and Kanan shouted in pain and frustration.
Hera and Chopper waited in the entrance to the hallway, with their respective weapons, a taser and a frying pan, ready to attack. It flew at them, head on, and Chopper reached to taser it. Simultaneously, Hera swung her frying pan at the bird. The metal frying pan attracted the taser's electricity, and Hera dropped the pan mid swing as her own droid ended up tasering her. The bird squawked at her tauntingly before retreating into the vents once again.
The crew gathered back into the common room, dissatisfied with the taste defeat, and to a bird, no less. "Alright, what's the plan?" Zeb asked Hera.
"Well, we obviously can't catch it, as we just proved, but we can get it to leave us alone," Hera replied.
"Wait," Sabine interrupted. "You mean we're going to surrender?"
Hera cringed. "I was thinking more of a compromise, but no, we're not going to keep attacking it."
"Oh, come on. That was fun," the Mandalorian pouted.
"So, what are we going to give it in exchange?" Kanan asked.
"Food? Like my cereal?" Ezra protested. "It stole mine! It's a cereal killer!"
"We'll give it things every creature needs," Hera replied, "like food, water, and shelter."
"What about knives?" Sabine asked. "Everyone needs knives."
"We're not going to arm the cereal killer with knives, Sabine! That'd put us in even more danger!" Ezra retorted.
"Fine."
"Don't worry, Ezra," Hera placated him. "I'm sure we can find something else to find the bird. In the meantime, why don't you try to find something it can use as a nest?"
"A nest?" Ezra echoed. "How?"
"Fine, I'll help you," Sabine agreed, following him to his and Zeb's cabin. "Do we have any twigs?"
"I don't think so," Ezra sighed. "Just a bunch of Lasat fur."
"That'll work," offered Sabine. "We can fill up a container with it."
"Not my cereal bowl!" Ezra shrieked.
Sabine facepalmed. "Enough with the cereal already! We can use something else."
"Like what?" asked Ezra. "All I have are a bunch of stormtrooper helmets."
"Perfect!" exclaimed Sabine. "I can paint it and everything!" She exited the cabin abruptly and returned a few seconds later with an armful of spray paint cans. "Let us begin."
Ezra ignited his lightsaber and cut two small holes in the side of the helmet. Sabine then began painting the helmet in neon colors and covering it with starbird symbols as Ezra collected handfuls of Lasat fur from various places throughout the cabin.
"This is weird," Sabine declared once the helmet had been painted and stuffed with fur. "It's purple and fluffy."
"Yeah, like your hair," Ezra joked, and Sabine swatted him in retaliation. She took some para-cord and tethered it through the saber cut holes in the helmet, and they left the cabin and headed to the common room.
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The teenagers entered the common room to see Kanan meditating on the ground with about a half dozen dead rats floating above his head. Sabine raised an eyebrow. "Is this some type of weird Jedi ritual?"
"No, these are for the bird," Hera replied. "I did some research, and convors eat small rodents, so Chopper electrocuted some rats in the cargo hold that apparently stowed away on our ship from some planet during a mission."
"And I'm levitating them because I don't want to touch them," Kanan added.
Sabine shrugged. "Fair enough."
Ezra held up the newly decorated birdhouse. "We finished!"
"It looks great!" Hera replied. "Kanan, if you could put the rats inside…" The dead rats floated into the helmet.
"Hey, is that my hair?" Zeb asked, recognizing the purple fur inside the helmet.
"What, you mean the rat fur?" Ezra joked. "I can't tell the difference." He barely dodged Zeb's paw as the Lasat swiped at him.
"Alright, that's enough," said Kanan. "You guys go hang that up in the cargo bay, so we can get this bird out of our hair."
"What do you mean? It's going to be living in a nest of my hair!" Zeb exclaimed as he followed the teenagers out of the room. Hera only shook her head and sighed.
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Three days later, the crew woke up early, excited to be back on base. They grabbed a quick breakfast-to-go from the galley and gathered in the cargo hold around the birdhouse. Hera opened the cargo bay doors, and the Attolonian sun glared off the ship's metal walls.
"Come on, birdie," Zeb said to the convor, flapping his paws at it. "Fly!"
"Remove thyself from my personal space, evil cereal killer!" Ezra ordered, pointing his spoon from his cereal at it.
"Go! Shoo! Leave!" Sabine demanded, to no effect. Fed up, she stamped her boot-clad foot and flung her granola bar against the side of the birdhouse. "Fly away now, or I'll shoot you!" she screeched.
When Chopper reached out at it with his taser, Hera decided to restore order. "Alright, that's enough. I don't think anything is going to make it leave."
"We could let it stay in here," Kanan suggested, glancing down at a small rodent that was staring intently at the cheese stick the Jedi was eating. "After all, it'll take care of the rat problem." The Spectres considered his proposition.
"Fine," Ezra said finally, holding his breakfast closer to his chest. "But it has to stay out of my cereal."
"And my paintings," Sabine added.
"And my bunk," Zeb agreed.
"And my hair," Kanan continued sheepishly.
"And the ship's wiring. The last thing we need is for it to eat the hyperdrive!" Hera laughed.
"So, we get a pet?" Ezra asked, warming up to the idea. "I've never had a pet before. Loth-cats don't count."
"Should we name it?" Sabine wondered.
"Yeah! Cereal Killer!" he exclaimed.
"No, Ezra. That's dumb," Zeb rolled his eyes.
"Well, it's not like there's another option, unless we want to call it That Flying Lump of Feathers," the Padawan protested.
"Oh, come on, guys. There are plenty of other options," Sabine replied, pausing to think. "Hey, what about Star?"
"Star? What does that have to do with anything?" Zeb asked.
"Well, it's a bird, right?" Sabine prompted.
"…Yes?" the other Spectres chorused, confused.
"Congratulations, Sabine. You know your animals!" Ezra teased.
"Shut up," she shot back. "Anyways, since it's a bird, and if we name it Star…" Sabine paused for dramatic effect, "then it'll be a Star bird!"
Kanan snorted in amusement and continued eating his cheese. "Works for me."
"So, Star it is!" Ezra laughed. "Now I can tell new recruits that there's an actual starbird on base! It'll scare them to death!"
The newly named Star extended its head out of its birdhouse to squawk at them and flap its wings as if to say, 'see, I'm terrifying.'
"Who's a good little Star bird?" Sabine asked it, peeking inside the colorful birdhouse. Suddenly, the convor launched itself out of the stormtrooper helmet and dive-bombed straight into Ezra's bowl of cereal. The bowl tipped, and cereal and blue milk splattered everywhere and soaked Zeb and Ezra as they shrieked in surprise and anger.
"No! My Space O's!" Ezra yelled, completely drenched in blue milk with cereal in his hair, as he hurled his spoon at the offending animal. "Bad Star bird! Bad Cereal Killer!"
The captain and the Jedi watched their crew in amusement as Ezra and Zeb went ballistic, Chopper activated his jet propulsors and chased Star around the cargo bay as she flapped her milk-soaked feathers in everyone's faces, and Sabine documented the moment by spamming the photo button on her holo camera. "I have a bad feeling about this," Kanan deadpanned.
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Author's Note: Thank you to sabinewren20.22 for suggesting this chapter. Please give feedback so I can improve my writing! Also, if you are interested in beta reading some of my fics, please send me a PM. If you suggest a favorite use for stormtrooper helmets from the first chapter in a review, I will write a chapter based on it. The next chapter will be on #36, followed by #8. Thanks for reading! anonymousclarinet22