Flamingo Quotes

The splendid thing about falling apart silently... is that you can start over as many times as you like.

Sometimes I think, I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.

Amos sipped his coffee. "Sorry if that distubed you. Khufu's very picky. He only eats foods that end in -o. Doritos, burritos, flamingos." I blinked. "Did you say-" "Carter," Sadie warned. She looked a little queasy, like she'd already had this conversation. "Don't ask.

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

May your love for me be like the scent of the evening sea drifting in through a quiet window so i do not have to run or chase or fall ... to feel you all i have to do is breathe.

A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?

in the afterglow of an evening rain i lay down in the grass and think of you my body aches like an after-kiss breaking in soft fires and wildflowers my dear, i will always be this tender for you.

I had embraced you... long before i hugged you.

she's got oceans tucked away in her hair poems swim under her skin.

Tea is just an excuse. i am drinking this sunset, this evening. and you.

how is it that he's always in my thoughts. even when i am not thinking.

There is something mystically sad and beautiful about how i will never see you again but meet you again and again in poetry.

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

Annabeth shook her head. "All these years sneaking around, and we could've just been ourselves?" "You should always do that." Alex strolled alongside, back in human form, though he still had a few flamingo feathers stuck in his hair. "And you have to flaunt the weird, my friends." "I'm going to quote you on that," Percy said. "You'd better.

When the silent flamingo dances pink with desire, I’ll be there, sipping on owl stares and kitten curls.

this life has been a landscape of pain and still, flowers bloom in it.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo.

my dear, we are all made of water. it's okay to rage. sometimes it's okay to rest. to recede.

sometimes i don't know, which moment which cool gust of wind will come, and enchant me tousling my hair and my heart, stirring...that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kiss the old wrench in my soul reminding me, all over again i miss you better in the rain.

I don't suppose I can wear the flamingo tie," he said as he pulled on black socks. "It's a bit festive, given the occasion," I responded. "Can't wear it to the opera," said the Colonel, almost smiling. "Can't wear it to a funeral. Can't use it to hang myself. It's a bit useless, as ties go." I gave him a tie.

With callused hands i tasted the softness of the moon in the coldest winds i discovered my soul's warmest fireplace in the roughness of his stubble the tenderest love.

moonlight disappears down the hills mountains vanish into fog and i vanish into poetry.

my love for you will always be like a mountain stream. quiet. persistent. continuous.

for we all have our own twilights and mists and abysses to return to.

Right at the flamingo orgy! Left at the multiethnic roof Santas! Straight past the pissing cherubs!

There is a moon, that rests in the quiet corners of a lover’s lips.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

You are a full human being. It's never as simple as being half and half.

If I began to draw myself away from you we’d still be like two mixed colors of paint impossible to separate.

flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together.

we were in her big oak bed facing south so much of the rest of the time that I memorized each wrinkle in the drapes and especially all the cracks in the ceiling. I used to play games with her with that ceiling. "see those cracks up there?" "where?" "look where I'm pointing..." "o.k." "now, see those cracks, see the pattern? it forms and image. do you see what it is?" "umm, umm ..." "go on, what is it?" "I know! It's a man on top of a woman!" "wrong. it's a flamingo standing by a stream." . . . we finally got free of one another. it's sad but it's standard operating procedure (I am constantly confused by the lack of durability in human affairs). I suppose the parting was unhappy maybe even ugly. it's been 3 or 4 years now and I wonder if she ever thinks of me, of what I am doing?

Remember, you have the right to be proud; remember, you have the right to be you.

. . . Mind if I take the flamingo?" "It's $2.89." "Whoa, Darren, you drive a hard bargain. How about I'm just going to take it?

Love me...with all the abandon of a sudden wild rain.

Don’t. Don’t come out unless you want to. Don’t come out for anyone else’s sake. Don’t come out because you think society expects you to. Come out for yourself. Come out to yourself. Shout, sing it. Softly stutter. Correct those who say they knew before you did. That’s not how sexuality works, it’s yours to define.

For each and every person, our Lord and Master provides sustenance. Why are you so afraid, O mind? The flamingos fly hundreds of miles, leaving their young ones behind. Who feeds them, and who teaches them to feed themselves? Have you ever thought of this in your mind?

Granddad asks, “Why does it matter if he’s black? The other flamingos don’t care.” And I’m certain what he’s saying is “I love you.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents...

and if i if i ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate i o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. (from i must become a menace to my enemies)

They carried on sniping in the front seat, and Mae turned back to Jamie. "You doing okay?" she murmured. "Yes," said Jamie, a bit too earnestly. "I love you, Mae. Your hair is the color of flamingos! And I love Nick as well." He gazed soulfully in Nick's direction. "Sometimes when you are not being psychotic, you are quite funny. And you!" He regarded Seb for a long moment. "No, I still don't like you," he decided. "Maybe I need another drink." "I don't think so," Nick said.

And stay, my dear stay... forever, as my quiet song, in my lilac dawn.

My inner Boy Scout had to try.” If this guy had an inner Boy Scout, I had an inner flamingo.

A single poem, alone can turn tides scatter galaxies and burst forth with rivers from paradise.

There is right and there is wrong, I have NEVER been wrong.

I have woken up…quite sloshed from night-mingled rains a little drugged, by mountain fogs I have been kidnapped for years....by a mere kiss.

Your ignorance may be innocent but the racism is real. I want both of you to think about how what you said might make me feel.

...A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river...

Saudade de um tempo? Tenho saudade é de não haver tempo.

Kill everyone now! Condone first degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat Shit!!!Filth is my politics! Filth is my life! !

The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.

— I don’t want to pretend to be anyone, not any more." "— So who is The Black Flamingo?" "— He is me, who I have been, who I am, who I hope to become. Someone fabulous, wild and strong. With or without a costume on.

Men are sandcastles made out of pebbles and the bucket is patriarchy: if you remove it, we fear we won’t be able to hold ourselves together, we pour in cement to fill the gaps to make ourselves concrete constructions.

To have a loving family is to feel afraid and yet believe you are going to be all right.

You should be more careful when you move, my dear what with you... spilling moonlight into my poem, with a mere flick of your hand.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

He was a thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of me and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime. No more baffling, exasperating soldier ever wore a uniform. Flamboyant, imperious, and apocalyptic, he carried the plumage of a flamingo, could not acknowledge errors, and tried to cover up his mistakes with sly, childish tricks. Yet he was also endowed with great personal charm, a will of iron, and a soaring intellect. Unquestionably he was the most gifted man-at arms- this nation has produced. -William Manchester on Douglas MacArthur

You steal my donkey and then to apologize you bring me a flamingo?' 'He's irresistible, though,' Asher said, lifting Buddy onto his lap and pretending to squeeze his cheeks. 'Look at that face.' 'He is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.' 'I know,' Asher said, 'but he's one of God's creatures.

A rain like melting pillows… a rain so beautiful I could never have let go of if not certain that someday...it would find its way into my poem.

Be a bit gay, be very gay. Be the glitter that shows up in unexpected places.

This book is a fairy tale  in which I am the prince  and the princess. I am  the king and the queen.  I am my own wicked  witch and fairy godmother.  This book is a fairy tale  in which I’m cursed  and blessed by others.  But, finally, I am the fair y  finding my own magic.

the time will come, my dear when I will hold you close and all will be right again in the world.

Scatter as a prayer escaping my lips... as orchids blooming in clouds.

a single poem the thing that can keep me light on my feet, when my soul is heavy with sorrow.

I dont suppose i can wear my flamingo tie" "it's a bit festive,given the occastion" "Cant wear it to the opera","Cant wear it to a funeral. Cant use it to hang myself. it's a bit useless, as ties go.

I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads on the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with sex elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate-pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine threepence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still. Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents...

After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foilage. "There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

Ainda lembrei de suas palavras amadurecendo uma esperança para mim quando eu de tudo descria: -Não vê os rios que nunca enchem o mar? A vida de cada um também é assim: está sempre toda por viver.

Matar o patrão? Mais difícil é matar o escravo dentro de nós.

May our twilights mix together like breath and breathlessness.

May the nights always be aglow with the bliss of the day with unharmed hands and feet and kissed cheeks.

I come from stories, myths, legends and folk tales

I’ve been friendly. I’ve been frightened. I’ve been fake. But I’ve never been fierce. I’ve been frustrated. I’ve been forgotten. I’ve been forgiving. But I’ve never been fierce. I wanna be fabulous. I wanna be flamboyant. I wanna flaunt what I’ve got. I want to be fierce.

Mum is a costume she squeezed herself into, for you.

I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle hell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the square parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me.

It sometimes seemed to Alex that the whole universe was against him. Getting away from FLamingo Bay had almost killed him. It had been an exhausting struggle against time, the elements, and Drevin's firepower. And now he was going back. It was the CIA agent, Ed Shulsky, who had made it happen. Alex, you know the place. I need you to tell me where they're holding Tamara. You can give me a layout of the island. Anyway, we don't have much time. You saw for yourself. The rocket is on its way, and if what you've told me is true-" It is." Alex felt a spurt of annoyance. Why should the American doubt, even for a moment, what he said? Was it perhaps because he was only fourteen? Shulsky noticed his reaction. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. But this plan of his, Ark Angel...Washington..." He shook his head. "It's beyond anything we could have imagined. And that's why we have to take him out. Right now. We don't have time to drop you off." But you're too late," Alex argued. "Gabriel 7 has gone. What are going to do? Shoot it down?

Watch, how the sun slowly rises from behind my ear new lines, new countries spring up in my palms my rough hair become swaying silk and all the leaves in my body become lusher than fruits.

You ask if I will write a poem I could, I suppose write the most splendiferous one of all but not right now not when your hands are brewing warm cinnamon tea across my skin not when I’m trying to imagine what might happen if you began flowering kisses upon me My dear, how can I write a poem when I’m already inside one?

He didn’t look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Hairspray is the only really devious movie I ever made. The musical based on it is now being performed in practically every high school in America—and nobody seems to notice it’s a show with two men singing a love song to each other that also encourages white teen girls to date black guys. Pink Flamingos was preaching to the converted. But Hairspray is a Trojan horse: it snuck into Middle America and never got caught. You can do the same thing.

Be a Flamingo in a flock of Pigeons

I wanted to study graphic design, because I wanted to work in an office with designer desks, ergonomic chairs, pool tables, and walls so colorful it looks like a flock of flamingoes exploded and splattered evenly from floor to ceiling.

Sun-struck, stuck in mid tropic strut, it sometimes stands as if considering how to cool avian plastic, dive into the mown lagoon of lawn; how take flight on dayglow flap- doodle wings, no matter if it is ball-bald going nowhere fast.

Packy watched her walk away, her perfect heart-shaped rear end testing the confines of her tight black dress. There was a God. Packy was now certain of it. How else could such heart-stopping beauty be accounted for? Such a thing could not be the product of a random universe. A flower, maybe. A rainbow, perhaps. But not Venus Versailles.

I am here and I have been here long before this moment, the first people were black and queerness predates its modern meaning. Queerness predates its derogatory meaning. Queerness predates colonialism and Christianity. Queerness predates any hate attached to it.

-Morreram milhares de moçambicanos,nunca vos vimos cá.Agora,desaparecem cinco estrangeiros e já é o fim do mundo?

I know that’s wrong, my thinking was wrong, the different ones are often the most strong

Remember you have the right to be proud. Remember you have the right to be you.

My potential salvation...must remain an unswerving commitment to treat generality only as it emerges from little things that arrest us and open our eyes with "aha" -- while direct, abstract, learned assaults upon generalities usually glaze them over.

You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know – you always have much less than you think. Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… “Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…” But it won’t be like that. You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.

When it's time to go onstage, know that you're not ready but this is not about being ready, it's not even about being fierce or fearless, it's about being free. I don't have a clue what I'm doing but that's not going to stop me.

A morte é uma brevíssima varanda.Dali se espreita o tempo como a águia se debruça no penhasco- em volta todo o espaço se pode converter em esplêndida voação.

Rockwood didn't have a movie theater or an IHOP or a strip mall. But it did have two churches, a ramshackle bar, and last (but certainly not least) Wacky Willie's Deluxe Goofy Golf, a barren landscape of wilted ferns and plastic flamingos with peeling paint. Wacky Willie had added the 'Deluxe' when finally ridding the thirteenth hole windmill of a stubborn family of bats after a great and terrible struggle that would forever be known as 'The Fearsome Bat War of Rockwood County' by Willie, but was usually referred to as 'That Time Willie Had to Get Rabies Shots' by everyone else.

This isn’t what I wanted for your moving daybut this is what it’s like to be black in this country or anywhere in the world. They interrupt our joy. Our history. Our progress. They know they can’t stop us unless they kill us but they can’t kill us all,so you’re living your life and suddenly interrupted by white fear or suspicion. They fear sharing anything. Our success is a threat.

I imagine us in Eden— two black boys in Paradise, naked, no fig leaves. Adam and Eve are long gone, so Kieran and Michael inherit the garden and the serpent is forgotten and the fruit on the tree of knowledge has gone rotten

Your best friend is a mirror. Other friends ask after you when you are standing right there. “Where are you?” They ask, “Why are you without your other self?” You two are the ingredients to make something brand new. You cannot unbake a cake. You can only slice. A knife is a mirror. A best friend can be a knife.

And I suppose that what I have learned is a lesson that the years, or self-concern, had begun to hide from me, namely, that the bravest and most loyal and loving people in the world seldom have heroic physical characteristics or the auras of saints. In fact, their faces are like those of people whom you might randomly pull out of a supermarket line, their physical makeup so nondescript and unremarkable that it's hard to remember what they look like ten minutes after they walk out of a room.

Ah." He paused. "I see where this is going. You want to know my secret pain." "Secret pain?" "Oh, yes. My inner demons. The dark current of torment washing away little grains of my soul. That's what you're after. You think that if you keep me here in your pretty castle and cosset me with sixteen pillows, I'll learn to love myself and cease submitting my body to such horrific abuse." Clio bit her lip, grateful it was too dark for him to see her blush. If she'd been flamingo pink the other day, she must be fuchsia now. "I don't know where you get these ideas." He chuckled. "From every woman I've ever met. You're not the first to try it, and you won't be the last.

I am still vaguely haunted by our hitchhiker’s remark about how he’d “never rode in a convertible before.” Here’s this poor geek living in a world of convertibles zipping past him on the highways all the time, and he’s never even ridden in one. It made me feel like King Farouk. I was tempted to have my attorney pull into the next airport and arrange some kind of simple, common-law contract whereby we could just give the car to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: “Here, sign this and the car’s yours.” Give him the keys and then use the credit card to zap off on a jet to some place like Miami and rent another huge fireapple-red convertible for a drug-addled, top-speed run across the water all the way out to the last stop in Key West … and then trade the car off for a boat. Keep moving. But this manic notion passed quickly. There was no point in getting this harmless kid locked up—and, besides, I had plans for this car. I was looking forward to flashing around Las Vegas in the bugger. Maybe do a bit of serious drag-racing on the Strip: Pull up to that big stoplight in front of the Flamingo and start screaming at the traffic: “Alright, you chickenshit wimps! You pansies! When this goddamn light flips green, I’m gonna stomp down on this thing and blow every one of you gutless punks off the road!” Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Come screeching up to the crosswalk, bucking and skidding with a bottle of rum in one hand and jamming the horn to drown out the music … glazed eyes insanely dilated behind tiny black, gold-rimmed greaser shades, screaming gibberish … a genuinely dangerous drunk, reeking of ether and terminal psychosis. Revving the engine up to a terrible high-pitched chattering whine, waiting for the light to change … How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing. The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed. Then it pounced. The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time. “Holy shit,” Jack muttered. “Have we got a visual?” “Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.” “Alright, so what’s the plan?” “They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.” “Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.” “Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything. But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him. Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’” The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.