Puffin Story - The Missing Puffling

Two puffins, Ava and Alci, were very worried. Their only daughter, whose name was Brie, who was not old enough to fly, dive, or live by herself - had disappeared from their burrow.

Alva and Alci had been out fishing. They both needed to be out at sea, diving for fish, as it was so hard to find the right fish to feed Brie. Pufflings preferred sand eels, which were the right shape and size. Other fish were too big or too wide for the baby puffins to eat. But the sand eels were harder and harder to come by. Alva and Alci had to fly many miles out to sea to catch enough to feed Brie. Instead of one of them going out to dive, two of them went.

Today, when they had returned to their burrow, Brie was gone. Their burrow, and the nest within it, located at the deepest end and decorated with feathers and grass, was empty.

There was no sign of a struggle. No sign of an injury or an attack.

No blood. No feathers. No body parts.

Alva and Alci walked outside, wondering if Brie had wandered out of the burrow only to be lostin the unfamiliar hillside, but they couldn't find Brie outside. As they walked, they found other puffin parents were searching for their pufflings as well.

It wasn't only Brie that was missing, but others too.

"How can so many chicks be missing?" Alva asked.

"Maybe Brie flew away," Alci said.

Even though they said it, they knew that this was not possible. Puffin chicks, when ready to leave the nest, fly away at night. It was the safest time as they would not be caught by the large gulls circling overhead. Brie knew this too. Moreover, Brie not ready to fly out to sea. She wasn't ready to catch fish either. She was too young to survive on her own.

Alva and Alci looked at the fish they had caught and brought home. Usually, they dropped the fish into Brie's mouth, but there was no one to feed today.

"It must have been a gull then?" Alva said, distracted with grief.

"Maybe," Alci said, his heart-broken. "We will never know."

---

Four years later, Alva and Alci decided the time had come for them to move.

There was no fish to catch on this end of the island. With no fish, Alva did not have enough energy to lay an egg, and neither could they catch enough to feed the chick. The sand eels they loved to eat were getting harder and harder to catch.

So, Alva and Alci, flew around in search of a new island - a place where fish were plentiful. It took hundreds of hours of flying over the sea, but they finally found an island that seemed to be a good spot. There was plenty of fish, but no... puffins.

"We can't live here!" Alva whispered to Alci. "There are so few puffins. We will be so lonely. Puffins are always surrounded by dozens and dozens of puffins. We like each other. We live with each other. We're social birds. When we're out in the ocean, we are alone. Must we be alone when we're on an island to breed and raise pufflings too? We can't do this, Alci."

Yet, there was fish here. Lots of it. The right kind.

Sand eels. Hake. Herring.

They walked around the island. It was a good place with a view of the ocean, plenty of grassy areas where they could dig for a nest and rocky crevices and holes. They were far from pests and predators. The humans seemed to be harmless too. There was plenty of fish too, which meant, they wouldn't have to leave their chick alone for long and risk losing a chick again.

As they walked around the island, thinking of the eggs they would lay and babies they would raise, they came across a young puffin, four years old who looked very familiar. It was walking around the island with its boy-friend, who seemed to be very fond of her indeed.

The puffin cocked its head at them.

It was... it was... Brie.

With her, was her boyfriend.

"The humans," Brie explained finally. "They brought me here along with other chicks. They fed me and the rest of us sand eels, as much as we wanted, all the time. So, we survived."

"Why?" Alva asked. "Why would they remove our babies from our burrows? What could they possibly know about raising a baby puffin? Why would they DO such a thing?"

---

To find out why Brie was brought to another island by a group of humans - read "Puffins: If You're Gonna Play God, Keep a Soup Can Handy."

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