Amy’s mother and father had both gone to work. It was summer time. Amy didn’t have to go to school. She sat and looked out of the kitchen window.

It was nice to have a garden in the middle of Brooklyn. Amy watched a family of starlings splashing in the birdbath.

The doorbell rang. Amy ran to answer it. Her friend Jean Remsen stood on the front stoop.

“Come in, Jean,” Amy said. “I was just watching the birds take a bath.”

Jean followed Amy through the house and out into the yard. As soon as the back door opened, all the starlings in the birdbath flew up into the apple tree. They sat there, shaking their wings to dry them.

Jean walked over to the bird feeder in the peach tree near the back fence. “It’s empty.”

“There’s some birdseed in the laundry room,” Amy told her.

The birdseed was on top of the clothes dryer in a large plastic bag. Jean helped Amy carry it up the basement stairs and out the back door.

Neither of the girls was tall enough to reach the bird feeder. Amy went to get the kitchen stepstool. Jean climbed up on it and took the roof off the bird feeder.

There was a scoop in the bag with the birdseed. Amy handed Jean a scoopful of seed to fill the feeder.

A little brown sparrow was sitting on a high branch on the peach tree. When he saw what Jean was doing he let out a high-pitched whistle. Amy heard another whistle, farther off. Then another. Before Jean had finished filling the feeder, the peach tree was crowded with little birds.

Jean climbed down and picked up the stepstool. At once the bird feeder was covered with fluttering sparrows. Birdseed sprayed out into the air around the feeder. It fell to the ground where some of the birds picked it up.

Amy was carrying the bag of birdseed. At the back door she turned to look at the birds. “My mother calls them flying pigs,” she said. “They eat so much.”

Jean took the stepstool into the kitchen. She came back to help Amy carry the heavy bag of birdseed down to the laundry room. “There must be a hole in the bag,” Jean said. “It’s leaking.”

Amy looked. Birdseed was pouring all over the steps. “Hold your hand over the hole, Jean.” She ran to the kitchen and came back with a big green trash bag.

The girls put the birdseed bag into the trash bag. Then they carried it down to the laundry room and put it back on the clothes dryer.

“It won’t take long to clean up the spilled seed,” Amy said. “We have two brooms.” She picked up the dustpan from the corner.

Jean took a broom. It was the old one. Amy looked for the new broom. She couldn’t see it anywhere. She had put it right there by the washing machine. But it was gone!