“I came down this morning, and they were all here like this.” I take a tentative step outside. “I Googled and there are mass bird deaths, but not on someone’s verandah, and they were starlings, which I don’t think these are. Somebody must have put them here. Leslie Swann. She did this.” I point at the carnage in front of me.

“Okay, slow down, June. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

“You don’t believe me?” I accuse him. “You’re the one who called her a crackpot. Wouldn’t this classify as crackpot behavior?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. “She was here yesterday, Ezra, and I told her to get the fuck off my property.”

He puts a hand to his head and closes his eyes for a second as though it’s all just too much to deal with. “I believe you. I do. We’ll figure it all out, but right now I think you need to go inside and call animal control to make a report.” He gestures to the birds. “And I’ll clean this up.”

“Are you sure?”

He waves me away. “It’s nothing. I’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. Racoons, mice, moles, pheasants. If it’s wild and up in these parts, I’ve seen it dead and had to remove it from someone’s cottage.” I gratefully go inside and leave Ezra to clean up the dead birds.

Animal control takes my report but tells me I’ll need to call the police if I think someone did it deliberately. They say I could save one of the birds to bring in for an examination to determine the actual cause of death but I wouldn’t get the results for up to a month.

Frustrated and still shaky, I do the only thing I can think to do—go into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Hopefully Ezra will stay and have some. Only as I’m pouring water into the machine do I realize how badly my hands are trembling. The door swings open with a bang and I jump, splashing some over the sides.

Ezra arrives in the kitchen. “I’m not sure coffee is what you should be having right now.”

“I know. I’m pretty jumpy after coming down to that.” I thumb in the direction of the verandah.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, going to the sink to wash his hands. “That would be an awful thing to come down to this morning.”

“You didn’t pick them up with your bare hands, did you?”