He’d heard somewhere, no telling where or when with his age, that pelicans were once revered creatures, that people had believed that a mother bird, to avoid her young starving, would strike at her own breast and feed them from her wounds. That she’d give her blood, her life, that they might continue on. Vernon chortled into his tea, splashing some onto his trouser leg. He brushed at it, angered. Bloody superstitious nonsense. Probably something he’d overheard that history teacher in the staffroom yammering on about. Old bloke. Long dead by now, surely. What had his name been? Couldn’t bloody ever shut up. He’d be talking to the worms in his coffin now he was dead. About pelicans and bloody that bloke who was killed by his enemies with a poker shoved in his arse like he was turned on a spit—the king?—and who knows what else.

He watched the bird as it choked in air but the wing above, the flag, never dropped. He finished his tea and still it waved. He sighed, went inside to the kitchen and found the key to his toolshed. Gumbooted, he strode across his meagre back lawn and unlocked the shed and put the padlock and key on a terracotta pot beside the door. He surveyed the shed. The shotgun on the back shelf and the box of shells nearby. Not sure about that. He handled the axe in the corner and decided.

He climbed down the stone embankment skirting their property and entered the mud. It sucked immediately at his gumboots and he struggled with each step to pull them free without leaving them behind and dunking his socks in the slop. During high tide the water would slosh right up to their back garden, covering where he stood, but now, with the tide out, there was just this muddy expanse. Soldier crabs jutted from their burrows and scooted back inside as he came near. And seaweed, big brown ropes of it, almost everywhere he walked. He had the axe resting over his shoulder.

As he reached the pelican he saw the cause of its suffering. From its proud beak protruded a small bit of plastic, the type used to carry a six-pack. Vernon sat down on his haunches. The eyes of the bird were alarmed but the wing had finally fallen. Perhaps the creature had only desired another with which to share its death. The smell of brine so strong. Vernon attempted a tug on the plastic but it was so embedded he feared pulling up the guts with it.

He was angered at his lack of forethought. No real way of swinging the axe out here. It’d sink into the muddy sand and wouldn’t lop the head off at all and simply cause the bird further pain. He didn’t want to have to swing the axe twice, hacking at the neck like he was splitting wood. Should’ve brought the gun.

He moved the pelican’s head so the neck was vulnerable. The poor bird couldn’t struggle if it wanted to. The surrendered wing rose once again and fell back. He raised the axe and, well-practised, swung it down. It hit the neck and immediately the head was off. The axe sank into the muck up to the handle. Blood gushed from the bird’s neck as he pulled it free. The wing again fluttered. The eyes twitched open and shut. Vernon leaned down and from some instinct put his hand over the bird’s eyes. The body stopped heaving.