What-the-Dickens, perhaps, sounds like a question of a name — and why not? Maybe most names should be questions, at least at first, for how do we know if our names fit us until we live a little?

The lonely skibberee slept with his hinging capewings pulled around himself for warmth. He was cozy, but not cozy enough. He didn’t know that most newborn skibbereen sleep in a heap with sixty or seventy or eighty friendly siblings, an arrangement that makes them all feel safe and warm.

He’d heard that McCavity accepted presents, too, so he dreamed of looking for a perfect present to give the cat. Before he could dream what the present might be, though, he woke with a start. Something was jabbing at him.

He rubbed his eyes and thought blearily, It’s McCavity’s claw. She’s come back to release me from my loneliness, even if I haven’t thought up a good present yet.

Then he woke up some more at the snap of a pair of bright yellow pincers that caught him by the leg.

It was the beak of a rust-throated grisset. She gripped What-the-Dickens and dragged him forward through the opening hatch.

“Let go!” said What-the-Dickens. “I have other plans for this morning. I need to find McCavity. I want to apply to be her pet.” The grisset paid no attention. Hauling the skibberee by one leg, she managed a lopsided ascent to her nest in a nearby bog maple.

When she got there, she dangled What-the-Dickens above her four nestlings.

The nestlings cheeped something that may have meant “Breakfast!” if it meant anything at all.

Yikes, I’m their present, he thought.

Now, you should know that the female rust-throated grisset is a small bird that doesn’t blend in. She can’t fly quickly or in a straight line. Her small claws are useless for anything other than perching. Her only defense is her lack of musicality. She is tone-deaf. (Eventually, a mama grisset’s song stylings drive her nestlings out of the nest. This is how they learn to fly.)

For all her deficiencies, however, the female rust-throated grisset is a plucky sort. Sure, she dips when she should dive, she swoops when she might more profitably swerve. But she is loyal to her own. She feeds them breakfast.

The mama grisset lowered What-the-Dickens headfirst toward the oldest and hungriest among her baby grissets. Luckily, the baby grissets didn’t like their breakfast present. They preferred raw worms.

Still, they were too young to be rude. They wiggled around in their nest and made room for him while the mama grisset supplied an aria. When it finally trailed off, What-the-Dickens politely murmured, “Bravo.”

The mama grisset got as tender a look on her face as was possible given the predatory lunge of her beak and the gleam of her bulging, lidless eye. At once she forgot that What-the-Dickens wasn’t born of her own egg, and so she flew off to find some other breakfast choices for her babies, including, now, him.