Dead Bird

There was a little brown bird outside the kitchen door, belly up. Claws tucked. Edie noticed it and said, "Look at the pumpkin!" I told her that actually, it was a bird.
"It can't fly."
"Why do you think it can't fly?"

She studied it for a moment longer, and pronounced it dead.
"Because it's dead. We gotta bury it!"

So we buried it. I found a bird's nest of pulled wool, still soft with lanolin, looking like a cloud, and laid the bird inside it. Edie helped me dig a hole behind the shed with her toy shovel, and I made it deeper with my grown up shovel. We laid the bird in it and said, "Good bye, bird." Then we covered it with dirt and patted it down.