For a couple days, everything was fine. You drank, you slept, you played. Sometimes mummah would take you out to the road, begging more hoomins for homsies. She wasn’t as good at it as daddeh had been, even with the three extra foals cooing beside her. Still, it was better than having to push another plastic cup. Then, as you should’ve known, the milkies dried up.
“Mummah nu hab mowe miwkies,” she told you all one morning.
“Buh… bestest babbeh nee’ miwkies nao!” Yellow yelled.
“Mummah nee’ nummies fo miwkies, but can nu find nummies!” Mummah began to cry, as did Orange, and Green. Yellow only stood for a second and began yelling again for milkies.
You, however, didn’t know what to think. Was this it? You went outside the can, nobody stopped you. You only knew one thing. You needed milkies from mummah, mummah needed nummies for milkies. You set out, starting with the heap of trash across the alley. The smell was revolting, but for hours you sifted your tiny body through it. Then the trash can next to it, then the sidewalks outside. Nothing.
You were getting hungrier, and your hope for nummies getting thinner. You were halfway down the alley now, your energy gone, with the worst tummy hurties of your life. The sun was setting behind you, and so you slumped down against the wall. It was over. You contemplated this to yourself as you looked ahead, to nothing in particular.
Far away, a dark pair of eyes watched you, still waiting.
Something caught your eye, something moving.
It was an ant.
The ant carried something in it’s mouth, a crumb. Too small to feed mummah, yet you stared at it with jealousy. It had found nummies, and you hadn’t. More appeared, making up a moving trail of tiny creatures, moving tiny crumbs to their nest partway up the wall, to a hole in the mortar.
It was this one though, that carried the biggest crumb. Up the wall it began, and it fell. Good, you thought. Something else would know how it felt. But the ant tried again, and again. Grabbing its crumb, going up the wall, falling, grabbing its crumb…
You had lost count by this point. The jealousy was long gone, replaced by interest, investment. You followed it with your eyes, up the wall, almost there. It made it. After so many failures, the ant had succeeded. Why could you not do the same?
You sprung up, one thing on your mind: nummies. Darting to every bit of litter, every trash pile. Something, anything to feed mummah. The stars were just appearing in the sky now, and under them your found it. A birds nest, smashed on the ground from above. Around it three chicks, very much dead.
You had just struck gold.
Grabbing one of them by the leg with your mouth, you began the long process of dragging it back to the can. When you arrived you saw mummah asleep, with your brothers and sisters sitting around her, tired, but starving. They went wide-eyed at the corpse of the baby bird.
“MUMMAH!” You called out.
Slowly, her eyes opened.
“Byu babbeh? Byu babbeh bwing nummies?” She got up, “Byu babbeh bwing nummies!”
Hopping to you, she leaned her head towards the bird, taking in a sniff. Not a pretty smell, but she was very hungry. She wolfed it down.
Awhile later, she finally gave the news.
“Mummah hab miwkies nao! Babbehs get miwkies!”
You darted towards mummah, your stomach empty, wanting your milkies. Something brushed you aside, Yellow.
“Bestest babbeh get miwkies fiwst!” Yellow said, darting to Mummah and suckling.
“Bestest babbeh do get miwkies first,” Mummah said. “Mummah wuv bestest babbeh, bestest bebbeh wuv…”
And off she went.
Resigned to your fate, you sat yourself down, and waited your turn.
The next morning you went out again, bringing back the second baby bird for more milkies.
When you went for the third bird a morning later, it was gone, something else had taken it. And so you went searching instead. Over the next few days, you kept searching, learning new things along the way. Like how to check under the top layer of garbage for anything edible. Which bugs you could kill with your mouth and bring back without hurties.
Then one night you were on your way back, a small piece of meat in your mouth.
“SCREE! BAWKIE MONSTAH!” It was mummah.
You dropped your nummie and sprinted around the corner. At the end of the alley, near the can, a large black monster with dark eyes.
And it was growling.
)