The Wild Robot

Reader, I’m not quite sure how Chitchat got enough air into her lungs to go on like that. And I’m not quite sure how Brightbill had the patience to listen. But he stood there and politely nodded as Chitchat rambled on and on and on.

“… and sometimes I see you waddling behind your funny-looking mother and you seem so nice that I thought I’d come down and introduce myself but now I’m nervous and I’m talking too much and my name is Chitchat I think I said that already.”

There was a pleasant silence.

Brightbill stood on one foot for a moment.

Then the gosling took a deep breath and said, “It’s very nice to meet you Chitchat I don’t think you talk too much I think you talk just enough and I like you so let’s be friends.”

A big smile appeared on the squirrel’s tiny face. For once, Chitchat was speechless.

CHAPTER 38 THE NEW FRIENDSHIP

Chitchat wasn’t speechless for long. She’d already been alive for a whole twelve and a half weeks, and she wanted to tell Brightbill about every exciting thing, and every boring thing, that had ever happened to her. And so, as the new friends played and explored and ate together, the squirrel shared her stories.

“I was born on the other side of the hill and then last week I decided I was ready to build my first drey which is what you call a squirrel nest and now I live in that tree with the weird bump in its trunk,” she said while the two of them kicked pebbles into the pond.

“One time a weasel chased me through the treetops until he missed a branch and fell all the way down and crashed into a bush and walked away all wobbly and he never bothered me again,” she said while the two of them crawled through a hollow log.

“Eww gross I saw you eat that ant one time I ate a gnat by accident and I didn’t like it at all I mostly eat acorns and bark and tree buds and sometimes the yummy berries that grow in your garden,” she said while the two of them took a snack break.

But Chitchat was as good a listener as she was a talker. And whenever it was Brightbill’s turn to speak, she’d keep quiet and hang on his every word.

Do you know who enjoyed their conversations most of all? Our robot Roz. The protective mother was never far away, and she felt something like amusement at the silly conversations she overheard, and she felt something like happiness that her son had made such a good friend.

CHAPTER 39 THE FIRST FLIGHT

Brightbill had spent his entire life by the pond, and he was becoming very curious about what lay beyond his neighborhood. So one day his mother said to him, “Let us go for a walk, and I will show you more water than you can possibly imagine.”

Roz placed the gosling on her flat shoulder, and the two of them set off across the island. They marched out of the forest, crossed the Great Meadow, and climbed uphill until they were at the top of the island’s western ridge. Before them was a grassy slope that descended all the way to the dark, choppy waves that surrounded the island.

“That is a lot of water,” said the wide-eyed gosling. “I’m a good swimmer, but I’m not good enough to swim across that pond.”

“That is not a pond,” said the robot. “That is an ocean. I doubt any bird could swim across an ocean.”

Waves rolled in from the horizon.

Seagulls circled above the shore.

A steady breeze blew up the slope.

Brightbill’s yellow fluff had recently changed over to a coat of silky brown feathers, and he spread his feathery wings into the breeze. And then—

“Mama, look!” For the briefest of moments, the wind lifted Brightbill off the ground. But he quickly tipped backward and thumped into the soft grass. “I was flying!” he squeaked.

“That was not flying,” said Roz, looking back at her upside-down son.

“Well, I was almost flying. I’m gonna try again!”

“I have observed many birds in flight,” said Roz. “Sometimes they flap their wings quickly, and other times they fly without flapping at all. They spread their wings and soar on the wind.”

“So I was soaring?” said Brightbill.

“Almost. There, look at that soaring seagull. It seems like she is not doing anything, but if you look closer, you will notice that she is making small adjustments with her wings and tail. I think you should try adjusting your wings in the wind, like her.”

Brightbill hopped onto a rock and opened his wings wide. “The wind is pushing me backward!”

“Change the angle of your wings,” said his mother. “Let us see what happens when they slice through the air.”

Brightbill slowly angled his wings downward. The more he turned them, the less the wind pushed him backward. And just as his wings leveled off—

“Mama, look!” he squeaked as his feet left the ground. “I’m soaring! I’m soaring!” He hovered there for a second, rising a little higher than before, and then he sailed backward into the soft grass again.