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33 Pygmy Checkerboard She’s a hopper, this pygmy checkerboard, bouncing from one spot on the lawn to another, zigzag, crisscross, double back, pound down. She checkmates the robin extracting a worm. Like the lilting ball in the old sing-alongs, she’s here, then there, then over . . . where? Eyes large as headlamps, she jockeys like a taxi late to the airport, bumping up on the curb, tumbling to a stop. If she were bigger, she’d be a semi, brakes gone bad, careening down the hill. She sails millimeters from the porch rail, nanoseconds from the cat’s grasp, a wide-eyed look of surprise that she’s landed intact. In avian sport, in NASCAR (National Avian Select Competitive Air Race) events, she’s always the one needing a feather fluff in the final lap, the one tangled with the tanager when the wind whips up, the one skidding into the power line, not across it. ...

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