June 8, 2025

Romans 8:14-17
Acts 2:1-21

The ae’o shouldn’t have had any doubt about the question. But she felt awkward and ungainly, which isn’t unusual when you’ve done a lot of growing in a very short time. She was only about four weeks old, but that was time enough to learn a few things about the world.

For one thing, she’d learned that she had very long legs as compared to the size of her body. The ae’o, it’s said, has the second longest legs for the size of their body of any bird. That’s a lot of leg, or not a lot of body, depending on how you want to think of it. She’d also learned that those legs were very useful for walking around in the calm waters of a fishpond, and she learned that she could use her long beak to pull food out of the water. She’d learned that in English she was called a “black-necked stilt,” which seemed fair enough, because she had long stilt-like legs and the feathers on her neck were definitely turning black as they changed with her age.

But she’d also learned that other birds were very different. The ‘Alae Ke’oke’o were sort of similar in size, but they had much shorter legs. In fact, they swam across the top of the water. She’d seen kolea and akekeke pecking for bugs and such along the shorelines before they left for Alaska. All of those birds seemed a lot more compact than she did, with her smallish body and long neck and long long legs. She’d watch the kolea wheel about the sky.

And she grew to believe that she could not fly.

I don’t know how she missed the fact that her parents flew quite well. I don’t know how she failed to notice that she, herself, had been taking wing-aided hops for a week. I don’t know how she missed all that. But she did. “I’m not going to be able to fly,” she said sadly one day, thinking that nobody was there to hear her.

“Really?” said a voice. “Why not?”

When she looked over, she saw another bird’s face with a long beak looking at her. It was a cattle egret, one of the many who liked the area of her fishpond.

“Just look at me,” she said. “Look at these long legs. Look at this long neck. Look at these wings. They can’t possibly get me off the ground and into the sky.”

The cattle egret looked her over carefully and said, “I’ve got long legs.”

She took a good look and realized that he did. “And I’ve got a long neck,” he continued.

“So you do,” she said.

“And have you noticed?” he asked. “I can fly.” And to prove it, he took to the air and flew twice around the fishpond before he landed near her again.

“I can’t be sure, but I think you can fly,” he said. “Have you tried?”

She didn’t bother to say, “No,” because they both knew she hadn’t. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, but she did spread her wings. She looked at him sharply to make sure he wasn’t teasing her, but there was no trace of laughter in his face.

She took off. She flew.

She took three turns around the fishpond – she’d meant to do the same two turns he had, but she miscalculated the landing and had to come back and try it again.

“I can fly!” she said.

“You can,” he said. “I’m glad you tried. And I’m glad you fly.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from a combination of memory, improvisation, and of course in conversation with the young people I tell them to.

Photo of an Ae’o (Hawaiian Black-necked Stilt) in flight by Eric Anderson.