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"You serious?" asked Jackson

"Yes, I am completely serious" Bodo held out his hand for a shake "I can’t train all da wild birdts, but I can train da ones I ith"

"How ot?" Jackson shook his hand

"Only one now And she’s kindt of lost But I will have eon killin’ out of ‘em These birds are critical to our EWS"

"How does it work?"

Jackson stared at h that it made me uncomfortable I battled with h it wanted to check s

"Okay, fine I’ll tell ya But you gotta swear on your life and your boyfriend’s life that you ain’t never gonna tell none-a theonna say"

I crossed er "I swear on all that is holy I swear on the cattle you’re going to give reeet your meanin’" He turned around and walked with the bird back to her cage, putting her inside Once it was closed again, he ca bands We put ‘erow up and the band is per for it to coes like that one you saw inside the band"

"But how does the bird knohere to go?"

"Before all the world went to crap, we taught ‘eoing out there, but we gotta do it The birds ain’t gonna live forever"

"How do you teach the at Jackson intently

"They teach the creatures We put the theo and they fly hoain, only farther and farther away each tiht home"

"But how do they knohere hoe while you transport thenetic fields in the earth and sic creatures, these birds Without them, we’d be in the dark all the time I can’t tell you how many times they’ve saved our bacon"

"But how do you send them somewhere else?"

"Well, that’s the tricky part See, we have to get new birds trained all the tio two places: home and to their food stop"

"Food stop?"

"Yeah This is kinda recent in the evolution of carrier pigeons, actually"

He looked so serious and sounded so acade a university class, even though he definitely sounded like a redneck more than a professor

"Used to be they only went one way But soo where their food is too, and that they didn’t need to roost where their food is necessarily So we rigged it up for them to have food at one stop and their hoo back and forth between those two places, regular as clockwork, couple ties to and froet other info?"

"Sure, like I said … we get info froine it like a connect-the-dots kinda map I have links to the Amazons and Cracker Barrel and a few other places And they have links to spots I can’t quite reach We just pass ame my sister used to play when she was little: operator Only it’s more reliable ‘cause we ain’t countin’ on the birds talkin’ They just take the sae from point to point"

I was too stunned to speak These kids had done so, I wouldn’t have even drea distances Networking on aThey could totally thwart any attacks planned by the canners

"I want in on this," I said, feeling as passionate about it now as I did the cattle, lad to hear you say that, because we need a contact down there Even though it’s a little worrisoet on your head, the benefits are way more important now But if you don’t mind, we’ll train someone else on the codes, and not you"

I nodded like a crazy bobble head "Yeah, no problem Whatever you want"

"You can teachup his hand halfway "I already kno to take care of birdts"

Jackson frowned but nodded his head "I’ll think about it There’s tiure that out Why don’t we head back to the house and see e can do about outfittin’ you to leave?"

We were just walking ahen a bird appeared out of nowhere

"Ya’ll go on ahead I’e first"

Bodo and I walked back to the house

"That was thehe’d respond I didn’t want to be talking to s jogged over and walked next to e, and he didn’t see sure I here I was supposed to go

"It is the second k I have ever seen I think dat Nina is ood"