I Am (Not) the Walrus by Ed Briant

there’s a problem with these pencils.” She waves the pencil in front of my nose. “The erasers wear down quicker than the leads, so if you’re like me and you spend equal amounts of time erasing and writing, then a pencil is only useful as long as the eraser lasts, which isn’t very long. I think they should make special pencils for people like me. They would be a long eraser on a very short pencil.” She points to the drawing with a stubby finger. “It’s supposed to be a female sand tiger shark, but I’ve got the anal fins totally buggered up.”
    â€œAnal fins?” I say.
    â€œYes,” she says. “Anal fins. You have a problem with that as well?”
    â€œI thought that was one of the things you were supposed to avoid in polite conversation,” I say. “You know, politics, sex, religion, and anal fins.”
    Her mouth gets small.
    Oops. I’ve gone too far again. I was just getting through to her. Me and my big mouth.
    â€œAre you trying to be funny with me?” She scoots around to face me while still cross-legged. “I have an idea,” she says. “Why don’t you leave me alone and go and talk to that ten-year-old kid with the big glasses?” she says. “He looks about the right age to find the idea of anal fins humorous.”
    â€œYou know what’s funny?” I say. “I already tried that. I told him a joke about anal fins, and he sent me over here as he thought you might appreciate it.”
    She scowls at me for a long moment, then scoots back around to face the shark tank. She turns a page in her sketchbook and begins a new drawing. Without looking at me she says, “I’m going to ignore you now, but because you were nice about my picture I’m going to let you know that I’m not ignoring you out of some strategy to hide the fact that I like you.” She draws a few lines, says “crap,” then turns to me and says, “I’m actually ignoring you because I don’t like you, I have no interest in you, we have nothing in common.”
    With that she tears out the page, scrunches it up, and throws it onto the tiles next to her. She turns to the next page, but it already has a drawing on it, which is of a bird. She flips through a couple more pages and then pauses on a page with a drawing of another bird.
    A very familiar-looking bird.
    â€œYou know what else is funny?” I say, pointing to her book.
    â€œNothing is funny.” She turns a few more pages until she comes to blank one. “Funny peculiar maybe. Funny-not-funny maybe. But funny ha-ha. Not a chance.”
    â€œActually it’s funny peculiar.” I switch the arrangement of my legs. Sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor is harder than it looks. “Something else strange happened just before I saw you yesterday.”
    â€œDon’t mind me,” she says. “I’m just ignoring you.”
    â€œYou know that bird you have a drawing of, three pages back,” I say. “The stocky grey and white one, with the stripey chest. I saw one. It flew right past me.”
    She stops drawing, freezes, then looks over at me. “Is this the beginning of some kind of joke?”
    â€œNo. Straight up. Dead serious.” I switch my legs again. “I saw one of those birds. Or at least something very like it.”
    She turns back the pages, until she comes to it. “This one?” she says. “You saw one fly right by you?”
    â€œYup,” I say. “That’s the one.”
    â€œWhich means it probably flew right past me,” she says. She folds up the book and stands to face me. “Sunny Jim,” she says, “or Toby, whatever your name is. I don’t know what planet you’re from, and I don’t really care, but that bird is a Peregrine Falcon.” She taps her pencil on the book. “They are incredibly rare, and the last one that lived in this region