Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974

This week, a story of mine that hasn’t been published yet! (Saturday Evening Post liked it but didn’t buy it!) I set it in a version of my late Mom & Dad’s old house. (Picture above.) Their Bi son is our narrator, helping out their bird-loving parents in “Hawks In the Neighborhood.”

“Mom,” I said, “you’re worrying over nothing. Remember how you were about the cat, before you started keeping him indoors all the time?”

“That was different,” she said. “Bertram gets fed and he can lounge around in the sunlight in the living room and he doesn’t go eating any birds.”

My folks had freaked when Bertram had shown up at the back door, happily presenting them with a freshly-killed goldfinch just after they moved in eight years ago. They hadn’t seen a Goldfinch in their yard yet; Bertram beat them to it.

He was an indoor cat from then on.

Here’s more snippet…

I told my Mom I needed to check this out before I did anything. Even though they had plenty of bird books I didn’t want Mom looking over my shoulder so I excused myself and went down to the Public Library to do research on hawks. Actually I did a lot of it on my smartphone sitting in the Library but I felt better around all the books.

Besides, I got to talk to Marty at the research desk. We’d gone to school together and I had kind of an unrequited crush on him. I told him what I was there for and he looked up and said “Sounds like a Cooper’s Hawk.”

Marty was a lot better than the internet or a library sometimes.

See you next week! (Not as late, I hope!)

Incidentally, the cat-and-goldfinch story really happened!

Happy Easter! —-jeff