Tales The Elders Told by Basil H. Johnston

Author:Basil H. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ROM Royal Ontario Museum

Thunderbirds and fireflies

Thunderbirds are not like other birds. Oh, to be sure, they have feathers—but they are feathers that shine with many, many colours too bright for the human eye to see. Nor do thunderbirds sing like songbirds. Their song rumbles and echoes from cloud to cloud until it becomes a booming mountain of sound that shakes the ground below. What is more, lightning flashes from the eyes of thunderbirds in fiery orange chains or in glowing sheets. Yet in autumn when the cold sets in and the drumming rains dull the bright leaves, the thunderbirds fly south to the sunny skies just as other birds do. They take the autumn storms with them. Indeed the playful young thunderbirds like to cause wild, noisy storms.

When the thunderbirds return in spring, long before the first robin, the storms that follow them are milder. Last year's mischievous nestlings are older now and less playful. They think only about building their own nests in the northern sky.

One spring when the world was young, all the thunderbirds flew north as usual. In their nesting grounds they shaped their nests from scraps of clouds woven around spring ice and sleet and sealed with night mists and late frost. Then the female thunderbirds laid their snowy, gold-flecked eggs on beds of sparkling breast feathers.

Once the females were settled comfortably, the male thunderbirds began to race through the sky. They talked to one another about the south and warm, lazy days in the sun. They talked even more about something strange they had seen on their way north. Their flight had taken them across what would one day be Michigan. There they had seen great eagles dipping their beaks to the earth and producing very powerful whirling winds—much more powerful than any winds the thunderbirds had ever created. The thunderbirds had been awed, and jealous as well. As they talked about the tornadoes, they grew so excited that they created a terrifying thunderstorm.

The females were very upset and rumbled and squawked among themselves. They simply could not leave the eggs they were sitting on. At last, however, their loud and urgent calls brought the males back to the nests. There the females stroked their mates' ruffled wing feathers until the males were quiet and calm again.

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