Story Contest 2018 #1 - Outstanding Stories (Sub-junior) » The unique bird

“The unique bird” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Anvi Srivastava, JSS International School, Dubai, UAE.

The unique bird

There was a pine tree near Christina’s house. In that pine tree, there lived a unique colourful bird. She was not a parrot, her wings were colourful but her body was white. She looked something between a parrot and a pigeon. She used to sing melodious songs.

One-day, Christina’s friends came to play in her beautiful garden. One of her friend, Jack, noticed this unique bird on the pine tree. Jack asked Christina, ‘Hey Christina, which bird is that? I have never seen this type of bird ever in my life’. All the friends too came close and asked the same question, ‘which bird is this?’ ‘I don’t know which bird is this, let me check with my mother’, said Christina.

Now, one of her friends Thea noticed the time and said, ‘I have to go home now, it is 4:50 p.m. now and I have to be back home by 5 p.m., so only 10 minutes.’ Everybody said bye to Thea and went inside Christina’s house. Christina told about the unique bird to her mother. Her mother said, ‘I don’t know which bird is that but it is quite rare’. Her mother suggested getting the bird in the house so that no one else takes it away.

Christina and her friends went out to the garden again and kept some grains to eat at the ground. The bird came down to get some grains and the children trapped her and put it in a cage. Christina kept the caged bird in the guest room. There after the bird stopped singing and looked gloomy. Her beautiful feathers also started losing their shine. Christina asked her mother, ‘Mom, why is the bird not happy?’ Her mother replied that nobody in the world is happy being trapped.

Christina realized that it was a mistake keeping the bird in the cage and decided to let her fly back to the garden. The bird became happy and started singing sweet songs again.