The Swanson Shuffle

The Swanson Shuffle Launches April 30

Ta-da, my next novel, The Swanson Shuffle has an official release: April 30. For me, that will be a happy day as this novel finally will be available to readers as an eBook and paperback. The link’s below. 

Over the next few weeks, I will share posts about the book’s pieces, that is, its story line, characters, setting, inspiration, and what was happening in 1974 when the book takes place. Today, I am writing about the title, The Swanson Shuffle, and what that means.

Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes leaves a dead-end job to work and live in a psychiatric halfway house, where she learns more than she expects from the ex-patients who live there. The Swanson House is a century-old mansion that must have been grand in its day when it was owned by the Swanson family who got rich from the mills in that town. Since then, it’s been an inn, a rooming house, and now a psychiatric halfway house. The building will eventually be demolished when an interstate is extended through that town.

That’s the Swanson part.

As for the shuffle, I will let Bia, who tells this story, explain what that’s about. At the start of the book, she has arrived at Swanson House for part of the interview process.

I pull my black VW Bug onto the long drive of Swanson House and park beside a maroon-colored car with fins. A man leaning over its chrome grill squints as he raises his head and pushes his long, dark hair back with the side of his arm. I remember him from when I came for the interview last week. His name is Jerry, and the man marching in place beside the car’s front fender is Lane, actually Lanford Dawson V. That’s what he told me, and I haven’t forgotten because he made such a big deal about the V and when he said, “I come from a long line of Lanes.”

I’m here for the overnight visit, part of the hiring process to see if I can cut working and living in a psychiatric halfway house. I’m early, but I’ve already driven once around Petersville, and it looks just like another Massachusetts mill town barely holding onto itself. The houses, mostly triple-deckers, are a little worn, and downtown is a strip of dusty stores a few blocks from the brick factories. A supermarket, an International House of Pancakes, and a couple of car dealerships are on the outskirts of town, where a patch of scrubby forest ends.

Lane stands beside my VW although his feet still move on top of a thin, gray crust of snow. Up and down. Up and down. Like somebody ordered Lane to mark time and forgot all about him, so he keeps doing it. I asked about it when I was here before. Debbie, the staff member who’s leaving, said it’s a side effect of the drug Lane takes. Two other guys at the house also take it, and they do the same exact thing. They call it the Swanson shuffle.

I witnessed such a side effect when I was a live-in staff at a psychiatric halfway house a long time ago. To be clear, this book is not a memoir. But I believe my personal experience allows me to give an accurate portrayal of what could happen when people with zero experience in the mental health field are hired to live with ex-patients. 

The residents are expected to have jobs, take their medication and do chores. They interact at dinner, meetings, card games, and activities such as volleyball games in the backyard. The staff members are supposed to be role models and help in any way they can. That’s how Bia feels when she is hired. But, alas, that’s not the what happens in The Swanson Shuffle. More soon….

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle to pre-order your Kindle version. (Paperback readers don’t have to wait and can get a copy now.) Thanks for your interest.

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books

Three Books and an Audiobook Ahead

Winter is full of itself, at least in my part of the world. Snow the other day, howling winds, and more snow last night and today. I will be out shoveling after I post this piece. This has been a good time to concentrate on getting three books ready for their release. Three, really? Yes, and each is a different genre. Throw in an audiobook I narrated. And this doesn’t count the new book I am writing. Yes, I have been a busy author.

Here’s the lowdown.

THE TWIN JINN AND THE ALCHEMY MACHINE

This month, a release date to be announced, I will release the second in my magical realism series for middle grade readers featuring a family of jinn aka genies. My son Ezra created the artwork for the cover you see above.

Jute and Fina Jinn, brother and sister, and their parents, Mira and Elwin, are enchanted beings who move to a small town. They go to a school, where their parents hope they will learn more about people. The twins must pretend to be ordinary 11-year-olds, but they are impatient with the human version of the world. Who could blame them? They have the power to fly, be invisible, and use spells. Humans don’t.

Without their parents knowing, Jute and Fina create an alchemy machine for a science fair project. Their machine does indeed turn any metal into gold, but it also brings unwanted attention, especially from their former master who is desperate to find them.

THE SWANSON SHUFFLE

I began writing The Swanson Shuffle in 1999. Since then, I’ve made numerous revisions and oh-so-many queries. No more begging. It’s time to get this story out there to readers. And that’s what will happen in late March. Here’s a quick look.

Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes leaves a dead-end job to work and live in a psychiatric halfway house, where she learns more than she expects from its ex-patients — just as the Watergate scandal in the U.S. comes to a head in 1974.

Swanson House is a derelict mansion that will be torn down for a highway coming through a dying mill town in Massachusetts. The state, which is clearing out its mental hospitals, hires untrained staff like Bia to help people make the transition. The residents work menial jobs, take meds, and interact like family. The three other staff members at Swanson have their own problems, especially one who gets too close to the people they’re supposed to help.

Bia’s only previous experience was visiting her grandfather in a state mental hospital and talking somebody down from a bad acid trip. But where others have failed, Bia has it in her to help what the staff member she replaced called dented cans. She tries to see the good in them.

FINDING THE SOURCE: EIGHTH IN THE ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES

Isabel Long’s next case comes from yet another unlikely source: a homeless man who approaches her outside a restaurant to say his mother was murdered 43 years ago and the case was never solved. Tom McKenzie was 12 when he found his mother’s body in their home.

Abby McKenzie was a well-liked person, who owned a secondhand bookstore and had a knack of finding valuable books for cheap. Actually, a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby is key to this case. Among the suspects are an avid book collector, a town official prone to stalking women, and her ex-husband’s second wife.

Besides the case’s age, Isabel finds other complications. The murder happened in the small town of Dillard, where Isabel would have to deal once again with a corrupt police chief who openly despises her. And many of the people connected to this case are dead. But Isabel is up to the challenge.

PROFESSOR GROOVY AND OTHER STORIES AUDIOBOOK

This audiobook is a collection of four stories I recorded in my son Nate Livingston’s Mudroom Sound Studio. Lenora Dias, her college hippie friends, and a notorious professor try to make sense of life during the late sixties. This was inspired by my experiment with the counterculture when I was in college. It’s a prequel of sorts to the novel Peace, Love, and You Know What. Just waiting for ACX to review the audiobook. Then I will announce its availability.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

A Bar in Every Isabel Long Mystery

One constant in my Isabel Long Mystery Series is that each book has a bar. Make that two in Missing the Deadline, the seventh, which has Dec. 21 release.

The fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts are the setting for this series. I am talking about towns that have a thousand people or so. Many are a one-store, one-school, and one-church kind of town. Some might even have one bar, and for those that do, it is often a gathering spot for the locals. That’s certainly true in Conwell, where Isabel Long, the series’ protagonist, lives. 

Jack Smith owns the Rooster Bar and Grille, and Isabel pours beer and the occasional mixed drink or cheap wine from a box on Friday nights when a band plays. She and Jack have a relationship, which makes for some interesting interaction since he’s a local guy and she’s a newcomer.

And the Rooster’s customers, especially those Isabel calls the True Blue Regulars, are often great sources for the cold cases she’s taken on as a private investigator. Keen-eyed Isabel also observes the romances, lasting or not, that happen at the Rooster. My lips are sealed but Missing the Deadline has one of the most unlikely romantic hookups that starts at the Rooster.

Jack Smith runs a friendly bar, but do something stupid and you’re out for six months. Do it again, and you might be banned forever. It took an intervention from Isabel to allow the Beaumont brothers back in, but then again, they did come to her rescue in a couple of her cases.

Baxter’s is another bar in my series. It’s more of a biker bar, and Dave Baxter, the owner, isn’t so particular about who drinks there. In fact, many of the people who got kicked out of the Rooster are customers. Isabel will visit Dave because he knows what’s going on in the town of Caulfield and beyond. Sometimes she meets people of interest there. It’s a little tricky because Dancin’ Dave, his secret nickname, obviously has the hots for Isabel, but the feeling isn’t reciprocal.

One other bar has appeared in my series, Red’s Corner Lounge, in Dillard. This is a seedy little joint that was the setting for a pivotal scene in Killing the Story, the fourth in the series. The way the eighth book is going, I imagine Isabel will be making another visit there.

My hilltown books that are not part of the series have their own bars; The Sweet SpotThe Sacred Dog, which is actually the name of a bar, inspired by the owner’s loyal pet; and Northern Comfort

One of the fun parts about writing this series is coming up with the band names. Here’s a sampling: Junkyard Dogs, The Plowboys (all highway workers), and Country Bumpkins. Their genres as you might imagine are country, rock and maybe a little bit of blues.

I’m not a big drinker — one good craft beer will do it for me. But I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent in bars, raising a glass or bottle, and dancing with Hank when there’s a band. And bars are great place to people watch, a definite hobby of mine, and have conversations with people you barely know. 

I actually dedicated one of the books in the series, Working the Beat, to the former owners of a country bar in the hilltown where we once lived that has definitely been an inspiration.

And I feel fortunate our son, Zack, has created Floodwater Brewing in Shelburne Falls, the village where we live in Western Massachusetts. That’s a glass of one of his hand-crafted beers in the photo above.

Here’s a scene from Missing the Deadline. Isabel shows up on a Thursday night. Fred is Jack’s often annoying cousin who Isabel has dubbed ‘el Creepo’ for past misdeeds.

Jack greets me with a “Here’s my gal” as I walk through the front door of the Rooster. I don’t normally come Thursday nights. It’s typically quiet, so my services behind the bar are not needed. Burgers and fries are solely what’s on the menu. The only music comes from the jukebox, currently playing Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar,” which could be a theme song for many of the drinkers here tonight. Although most have another workday tomorrow, they’re getting a jumpstart on the weekend, playing pool or just hanging around drinking and yakking about what’s going on in their lives or somebody else’s. As I’ve mentioned before, gossip is the biggest pastime in this town. The television in that part of the room broadcasts a baseball game with the sound off, but nobody is paying much attention since the Red Sox aren’t playing.

I take a stool opposite Jack, who places a cold draft in front of me. 

“You can put it on my tab,” I joke.

“I believe it’s time to make you pay up, Isabel,” he says, winking.

Jack’s cousin, Fred aka el Creepo, who sits four stools down, groans. He and I are the only ones at the counter. Fred’s got the best seat in the house, the one where you can rest your back against the wall that’s shared by the men’s room. Of course, the sitter is privy to whatever is going on there, which can be entertaining or disgusting. Maybe someday I’ll time how long the men in there take to drain a bladder full of beer and make a score board. I’m only kidding. 

“I don’t know how much of this I can put up with,” Fred says.

I take a drink before I dish back a comment.

“Where’s that gal of yours tonight? She dump you already?”

“Funny, Isabel. Very funny. Nah, she had to do somethin’ with her mother tonight. Things are just fine between us.”

“Glad to hear,” I tell him.

BOOK NEWS: Missing the Deadline has a Dec. 21 release on Kindle. Price? $3.99. Paperback readers will have to be a little patient. 

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The Sacred Dog

My Next Bad Guy: Al Kitchen

I will admit that I am fond of the bad characters I create. Actually, I see them as flawed people who do reckless and sometimes hurtful things, and because of that they become major players in my books. That’s the case for Al Kitchen, one of the protagonists in my next book, The Sacred Dog, which is out Dec. 27.

The Sacred Dog takes place in my favorite go-to setting, that is, the hill towns of Western Massachusetts, where I’ve lived a good portion of my life, twice. It’s a thriller centered on bad blood between two men, Al Kitchen and Frank Hooker. Frank owns The Sacred Dog, the only bar in this dinky town that caters to the locals. Frank blames Al for the death of his brother, Wes. Al was in the crash that killed his best buddy, but not at the wheel — a fact Frank won’t accept. Let me say nothing good is going to come from this feud.

Al didn’t have it easy growing up. He lost both parents when he was young and was brought up by his grandparents. Pops was a drunk and an abuser. The one good thing he did for Al was to teach him how to hit a baseball, but even that didn’t work out for him. His grandmother, who he calls Ma, is Al’s ally. When Pops got violent, she would give Al a look that would send him hiding in one of the junked cars his grandfather had stashed in their backyard. 

Other than his grandmother, the only person who meant anything to Al was Wes. If there was trouble in town, the two of them were in it together. Now Al goes it alone.

Al’s not welcome at The Dog, as the locals call it, but after his grandmother interceded, he gets to have two beers. Frank figures it’s better to keep his eye on somebody he doesn’t trust or like. Al, of course, resents it. 

The resentment builds, especially after the arrival of Frank’s ex-wife. There’s a dark secret between Al and Verona that has the potential to create a larger and perhaps a violent rift between the two men.

Is the character of Al Kitchen based on anyone real? No. Like all of the others, he came from somewhere in my brain. That’s true of the other so-called bad guys. Sometimes I let them redeem themselves like the Beaumont brothers in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. Other times I let them just go to hell. I’ll let you decide about Al Kitchen.

Here’s an excerpt from the book. In this scene, Al sits with a bottle of booze in the grandstand of a country fair to watch a truck pull. At this event, drivers try to see how much weight their trucks can pull.

The truck getting ready to roll was called Road Hog, the words stenciled in black on its red paint. The names of the guy’s sponsors were printed all over the vehicle. The face of a monstrous, angry pig was painted on its hood. The announcer, a woman with a smooth, round voice, called the driver’s name over the public address system, and he revved its engine in response, sending a fresh sample of exhaust through the stands. The grandstand’s metal roof above his head amplified the sound, overwhelming every other at the fair and cutting through Al’s ears like a chainsaw. He squeezed the bottle of Jim Beam between his legs as he covered his ears.

Al thought Road Hog looked promising, but it only dragged the sled a couple of yards before it conked out and smoke poured from beneath the hood. Road Hog’s fans gave up a collective moan in the rows below Al, and a sweet, young thing in tight, black jeans stood up while biting her red, painted nails. A couple of guys ran to the truck, but they were helpless to fix the engine’s problem, so they waved for a tow.

The woman’s voice came over the P.A. system. “Sorry, Lou. Looks like that’s all for tonight.”

Al laughed at the man’s failure.

The pull had a delay while Road Hog was towed from the track and another vehicle, a black Chevy named Fast Food, took its place. Two boys raked the track’s surface to rub out the tire tracks from Road Hog. If Al were to get into truck pulling, he’d fix up the Mustang in the junkyard behind Ma’s house. Hell, he could have his pick of the junks back there, but he favored the Mustang, which had been his first car. He’d call it Big Stud or something like that, so people would know right away it was his. He’d paint the Mustang black and purple. He’d put in the most powerful engine and rev it to get everybody’s attention. 

Al surveyed the stands. He saw Frank and his buddies, all regulars at The Dog, below and to his left. One of the men yakked. A bottle was being passed. Al checked his own. It was getting low. He considered joining Frank’s group but thought better of it. Early was the only one worth talking to and that’s because he was nice to his grandmother. Sometimes when he delivered the mail to their house, Early stopped for a couple of minutes to make small talk with Ma. He complimented the new roof on the house and the gladiolas Ma grew this summer in the front yard. Early had good country manners. He was alright.

He checked the crowd, finding enough people in the stand who were on his shitlist at one time or the other. There were a couple of local cops, all part-timers, who went to school with him. He saw one guy he owed money from a bet. He snorted when he spotted a bald man, who used to be on the board of selectman in Holden. The incident happened over fifteen years ago. Pops accumulated so many junk cars in their backyard, the neighbors began complaining, so the board sent a registered letter saying he had to get a junkyard permit. At first, it set Pops off, but then he liked the idea. He could turn his collection of junkers into a legitimate business, stripping them and selling parts. He was slowing down and had only a couple of years left to go, they found out later.

Al drove his grandparents to Town Hall, and Pops made his case to the board of selectmen about why he should get a Class III, which was a fancy name for a junkyard license. Ma didn’t say a word as Pops talked about how he would fix the place up and string lights across the yard like a used car lot. Two selectmen seemed to listen carefully to what Pops had to say, but one of them, the bald man sitting below him in the grandstand, was a total ass about the whole thing. He was a native, but you wouldn’t presume it by the way he acted. He was the kind of guy who liked to drive around town looking for trouble to report, one of those stingy locals who welcomed all the rules the newcomers wanted.

Al recalled how that selectman leaned across the table and shook a finger toward Pops. “Mr. Kitchen, I just don’t believe you’ll keep your word. I’ve known you all my life, and I know the way you live.”

Pops, a man who had legendary drunken bouts that inspired him to outrageous antics in his youth, who could slap a hand against a body faster than the person expected it, who once killed a dog by slamming a shovel against its skull, stood silently. Al thought for the first time his grandfather looked defeated. There were many times he hated the old man for the way he treated him and Ma, but he hated this other man worse for what he did to his grandfather. He made Pops look weak.

Al rose, towering over his grandfather even though he was not fully grown, as the selectman continued to rant about Pops’s habits. Then Ma got up. The three of them stared down at the man until he stopped talking. Afterward, the vote was two-to-one in their favor for the Class III. Of course, Al fixed the man good a couple of months later. One night, Al shot his .22 through his living room window. The bullet ricocheted off the woodstove’s pipe into the wall above the man’s head. Al didn’t wait to see what happened next. He ran into the woods and rode his dirt bike home. He stashed it in the junkyard. 

When the cops came to the house, Ma told them Al was in his room. Al went to the kitchen to meet them. He had made himself yawn. “You think I drove over to that guy’s house and tried to shoot him? I’ve been here all night, watchin’ TV and reading dirty magazines in my room. I was just getting ready to hit the sack,” he told the cops. “Feel the hood of my car, if you don’t believe me.”

It was a minor victory for the Kitchens although Pops never did much with his junkyard, except die there. He had a heart attack while shoveling during a heavy March snow and lay there on the ground until Ma found him, too late to save. Ma renewed the Class III every year out of spite, and the selectmen, a different board now, never contest it.

LINK TO THE SACRED DOG: https://mybook.to/thesacreddog

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Who’s New in the Series

I mean the characters in Following the Lead, next in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. As those who have read my books know, I have many who appear in every or nearly every book: Jack, the owner of the Rooster and Isabel’s love interest, of course.; the Old Farts; Annette aka Tough Cookie; the Beaumont brothers. Even ex-police chief Jim Hawthorne aka Thorny, an appropriate name because he’s a thorn in Isabel’s side, lingers in this series.

But fresh blood is welcome. And that’s what happens in each book, including this one, which had a Nov. 3 release.

First, a refresher of Following the Lead’s plot: Isabel’s old boss, Lin Pierce was a boy when his baby sister was abducted from the front yard and never found. He was supposed to be watching her but he got distracted. Lin hopes Isabel can bring closure and perhaps find his sister.

So who’s and what’s new? We do get see a different side to Lin, who hired Isabel in the second book at the ridiculous rate of a buck a day. But it was an arrangement that was OK because Isabel had to work for a licensed P.I. for three years before she could strike out on her own. In Following the Lead, we meet Lin, the distraught and hopeful brother.

We also get to know his parents, Ben and Jessica Pierce. Ben we know under his alias, the Bald Old Fart. The abduction of their daughter severed that marriage. Ben also had issues with his son, blaming him and his ex-wife for the baby’s abduction. But he goes along with Isabel taking on this case because he knows her from her visits to the backroom of the general store where the Old Farts gather.

Jessica is less enthused. A musician, at the time she was giving a lesson to a student who would later go onto to be a well-known pianist. She is a bit uneasy about Isabel’s line of questioning, actually more than that, but I won’t spoil what happens there.

Then, there is the well-known musician, Tim Robert Todd. He’s retired now and happens to live in Caulfield near Gary and Larry Beaumont. Isabel believes he’s key to the investigation but has a hard time meeting him. For much of the book, his reputation precedes him, but that changes dramatically.

Then, there’s the person responsible for stealing Baby Elizabeth, as she became to be known. Like the musician Tim Todd, they are part of this mystery’s unfolding. Of course, there are sources Isabel meets like two former neighbors.

Here’s an excerpt. Isabel and her mother, her partner in solving crimes, are meeting with Lin Pierce at his home. He reveals his father is Ben Pierce, aka the Bald Old Fart and the strife his sister’s abduction created for the family.

And now that Lin has shared that information, I see the family resemblance in the facial features between the two men although Lin still has some hair and the Bald Old Fart, one of the older members of the group, is heavier. I wonder if he has an inkling his son wants me to pursue this case because he was oddly quiet during my last visit to the store’s backroom. I don’t go every week, just when I need their help with a case or for a little local levity. 

“I do know your father. Is he aware you want to solve this case about your sister?”

“Let’s say my father and I aren’t very close, but I told him. I felt I had to. Besides, he may have useful info he hasn’t shared with me. At first, Dad wasn’t happy about it, but he changed his mind when I told him it would be you. He said he was impressed how you handled your other cases.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Oh, and just so you know, I paid for one of the services where they use your DNA to tell you about your ancestors.” He frowns. “That didn’t turn up any long lost family members or even the ones I have. But it was worth a shot.”

“Glad you told us that,” I say. “Ma?”

As planned, I let my mother ask a few questions. She reminds him we would need a list of other persons of interest. It gives me the opportunity to think about the Bald Old Fart and how I should handle him. Certainly, the other Old Farts must know his back story since they all grew up in the hilltowns. The Bald Old Fart is married to a local gal, his second wife it seems. He taught math at a local high school and is retired like his backroom pals. If my memory serves me better, I believe my son, Alex, the engineer had him in class. Maybe even my daughter, Ruth. Matt, the heavy equipment operator, didn’t as he went to a vocational high school. I will have to quiz them the next time we are together although Ruth won’t like it that I took another case. She worries about my safety too much. Alex and Matt? They actually think it’s cool their mother is a P.I. Thank you, boys.

“That must have been hard on you as a young boy,” I hear my mother say. “I take it your parents didn’t have another child.”

“No, they didn’t. My father didn’t when he got remarried. My mother never married again. Once was enough. And, yes, it was hard on me as a kid. Really hard.” He clears his throat. “I heard it over and over from my father. Why did I have to leave my sister to go chase a stupid dog? Why didn’t I check with my mother to make sure she had her? Why did I make a big fuss when she asked me to watch her? The list goes on. I tell myself I was only eleven. Just a boy. Dad has tried to make it up to me in his way. Sometimes it helps.” He looks at me directly. “Here’s why I am hiring you. I want to know for sure what happened to my sister. If she’s alive, I want to meet her, to tell her about her real family. If she isn’t, I want to grieve for her like a brother would.”

“You mention in your notes about meeting a woman you thought could be your sister. I saw the photo you took of the woman at Luella’s. But I couldn’t make out her face very well.”

“Unfortunately, that was the best I could do under the circumstances. Plus, it was a piece of crap phone.”

My mother speaks, “What features did she share with your mother?”

“The eyes definitely. One was blue and the other brown, a trait on my mother’s side that unfortunately I didn’t inherit. And the long nose. She had what I would call an elegant face. When you meet my mother, you will understand.” 

As I jot down that detail, I have to ask the all-important question.

“Does your mother know that you want to hire me to investigate this case?”

“Yes, we’ve talked it over. She’s fine with it.” He pauses. “But she wants to meet you and your mother alone the first time without me. I understand. I believe she’ll be more comfortable talking with you than me. Maybe there are things she doesn’t want me to know. I’ve tried in the past but she pushed me aside. Too much pain, I believe. I was surprised she didn’t resist when I brought it up recently. She, of course, knew of your success. That won her over.”

“When can we meet her?”

“She mentioned Wednesday. I’ll give you her number before you leave, so you can set up a time.”

I glance at my mother, who gives me a nod. A day of surprises for certain.

“Yes, that would work for us.”

“I will let her know.” He finishes his glass of water. “So, how would you two like to go for a ride? I’d like to show you my old neighborhood.”

“Please do,” I say. “I did bring a copy of that map you gave me.”

Lin nods.

“Too bad someone with your brains wasn’t investigating this case when it happened.”

My mother speaks up.

“Yes, it is.”

LINK: Thank you for those readers who have already downloaded Following the Lead. Here is the link to buy it on Amazon: https://mybook.to/followingthelead Paperbacks will be out soon.

PHOTO ABOVE: Saw this birdhouse on a recent walk. The hole wasn’t big enough for whatever bird wanted to nest there so it did a renovation.


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