Parakeets And Sheep's Blood

20250402

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Birds circled overhead. Not just scavengers, either; there were pigeons, starlings, parakeets. (Once remarkable, now naturalised. Symbolic for so much of our changing world.)
The flocks swirled and spiralled. Never touching. Leaving no part of the field without a feathering watching canopy.
I turn my gaze back to the bloodied ruts. The farmer is wringing his hands, close to tears. His family will likely never recover from this.
“Don’t want to think it’s monsters or the like, but… I can’t understand it.” He peers across the field as if hoping the sheep might reappear. Pop up shouting “belated April fool!”.
“You had fifty, you say?”
“Aye. All ewes in this flock. They were right as rain last night, weather lovely and all, then this morning…” He waves to the trampled strained mud. “Fence is intact. Gate was locked. No signs of a truck or owt in the lane. Neighbours heard the poor things screaming but nothing else.”
“Hm.” I crouch and sniff. All I can find is sheep. Sheep-poo, sheep-scared, sheep-blood. “Well. I can tell you plenty of things it’s definitely not. But I’m afraid trying to figure out what it was may take a while.”
He nods. Slumped and helpless.
I purse my lips. “Do you have ‘unnatural blights’ insurance?”
“Aye.”
Good. It’s standard in most packages but you’d be amazed how many people think they can just stick a few extra nails in the fence and avoid paying a few quid a month.
“I can write up that it’s definitely not a mundane cause. They’ll argue it and won’t pay out just with that, but it’ll let you get the process started.”
“Ta.” His face creases into grateful relief.
The payout probably won’t save him. Generations of ties to this scrap of land will likely be severed after this one night of blood.
I’ll get Carol to look into who’s buying up properties in these parts. Just because it’s a supernatural threat doesn’t mean it doesn’t trace back to a mundane cause.
My eyes drift back to the ceaseless birds. My thumbs are prickling.
“Yeah. This investigation’s gonna take a while.”

Prompt was the first sentence.