Her sister squawks, stands, leans forward, and squawks again. It's a funny sound—loud, but not threaten-ing. Raptor Red stands up too and squawks. The squawk is a rarely used signal. It means I'm here—I won't bite—I'm here. A soft sound of feathered wings comes from the tops of some tall cycad trees. A bounding troop of sinorns, a Chi-nese bird species who invaded the Americas along with the raptors, flit down a few dozen feet in front of the raptor pack. Raptor Red is beside herself with excitement She scrunches down, laying her head and neck along the meadow floor, trying to look as meek and nonthreatening as she can. But she can't control her tail. Its stiff rear end twitches side to side. The sinorns take off immediately. Calm—calm—CALM! she thinks to herself. She closes her eyes. She focuses inward. Her breathing slows. Her tail stops twitching. The sinorns return—Raptor Red can hear them. They are very close. One of the birds pokes its snout up Raptor Red's nostril. Kah-SNEEEZE! She can't help herself. She opens her eyes--the birds are gone again. Calm . . . Calm. . . . She lies motionless for two minutes. Then she feels what she's wanted all day—tiny bird feet walking up and down her back. She winces very slightly as a red-hot spark of pain comes from just behind her shoulders. Then another. Own two at once. But after each spike of pain comes a lingering warm feeling—a mixture of throbbing blood flow and relief. the chicks watch the operation. They've never seen it before. A half-dozen sinorns are methodically surveying Raptor Red's back. Each bird stops every minute or so to reach down, carefully place its beak over a tick, and re-move it with a twisting-backward head movement. 'The chicks charge the birds, hissing. Raptor Red's sis-ter growls an authoritative rebuke. The chicks shrink back, and the birds return. For a wonderful hour the adult raptors get groomed and plucked and bitten and deticked. The sinorns even open the edges of the tick-induced wounds, nipping off infected skin. That really hurts, but the raptors endure it. They've been through it before. They know that a few days in the sun will heal the wounds with hardly a trace. Unfortunately, the chicks are too rambunctious to learn the joys of bird-grooming. When a sinorn alights on a chick's back, the chick tries to bite it. Raptor Red's sister has to interrupt her grooming repeatedly to snarl menac-ingly at her offspring. It's too much for a mother to bear. Raptor Red's sister slowly rises, using smooth movements of legs and back so as not to scare the birds. She flicks out one long hand and flattens a chick to the ground. "Ghurk." The chick gets the message. It lies still. The other chicks stare, speechless. They've never seen their mom so angry before. Thus the chicks learn, reluctantly, to sit still while being serviced by tick-birds. In Raptor Red's mind, this meadow will always be associated with healing ministrations from the sinorns. "Tick Bird Meadow" is a good translation of how her memory labels the locale.