SCRATCHY FINDS A MYSTERIOUS CORPSE ON THE WOODLAND FLOOR THAT I MISSED AND WE TRY TO GUESS HOW IT GOT THERE.

I DIDN’T HEAR THE DEATH CRACKLE OF TWIGS, THE BOUGH BACKBREAK OR THE THUMP OF EARTH.”

When I press my nose into its chest, I inhale a touch too hard and feel a feather f lick up my nostril. It quivers as I sniff harder. It tickles and smells a little spiteful: there’s a bite, and it’s faintly vicious and certainly familiar. I lift the limp head and draw my fingers down its sturdy bill, smoothing the nasal bristles into symmetry.

Then I press the point into my thumb, squeeze its ebony toes together and slide the needle tip of one beneath my nail. A f linty hook – a sharp contrast to the pad beneath, which is coarse, ashy and pliable like a tiny fingertip.

The outstretched wing is f lawless pied beauty, petrol blues and shimmers of emerald contrasting with the broad snowy band of shaggy feathers which arch from its shoulder to its rump. And when I fan it, the neat windows of white in its primaries f lash – I count 10 translucent panels, so dapper, so smart.

Then I run the length of its surprisingly soft tail across my lips; the tip bends away and dabs my cheek and I can feel the glimmer, the powdery electric lustre, the terminal glint of bronze and violet.

I gently preen it until it’s perfect, so perfect that it makes me smile. Scratchy is looking at me, at it. Well, it is his, I suppose – he found it.

I’d been mooching along, then he wasn’t there so I looked back and he was nuzzling the corpse in the middle of the path about 20m behind me. It didn’t make sense. I’d just walked that way: how could I not have seen a dead magpie lying there? Surely I couldn’t have stepped over anything that obvious?

I even retraced my steps, re- created that portion of our journey, re-saw what I’d just seen. I would have spotted it, but I didn’t. Could it really have literally ‘dropped dead’ behind me? It was fresh – no rigor mortis – and while it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t as cold as my frost-slapped fingers.

And this is only part of the mystery. It is completely unmarked: pristine, no wounds, no blood, not a plume out of place. And it was set deep in the woods, in a drooping cavern of stringy beech and lanky hazel, not magpie habitat – we are deep in jayland.

My magpies make their mischief along the hedgerows, cobble their tatty nest into the same crook of poplar behind the crumbling pigsty. They used to dance along the thatch, barking at the boys, who’d bark back and bolt over the garden to banish them and their brazen attempts to burgle their bowls. I’ve never seen a maggie in here.

Fox? Would be lucky to catch one of these artful crows; no sticky saliva anywhere. Goshawk? They would, and they’re our neighbours, but I’ve pawed through all of its garments, blown through its smalls, scrutinised its papery skin and there are no puncture wounds. Ditto buzzard, ditto yob with a shotgun. Could one of the pylon peregrines have sky-blinded and sun-punched it out?

I didn’t hear the death crackle of twigs, the bough back-break, or the sudden thump of earth. Or was it ailing: did it seek some refuge, did it hop weakly into the darkening trees, get lost and lose its grip on life as the frigid morning opened?

I hate unresolvable mysteries. I huff. Damn: I’ll be Mulder and Scullying this for the rest of my life. I can do without blind- enders.

Scratchy is still staring at it. He thinks he wants it, but I know his bird-eating days are long gone. But there is another dilemma… what am I to do with Miss Marple’s magpie? I want it, to keep it. I’ve got that lifelong need to collect nagging me, to snatch up and cache Nature’s shiny things, to catalogue and covet, and this is such a gem. I cherish this corpse already – surely it must join all of the other prizes in my treasure chest… freezer.

Then a raven cronks somewhere far out over the forestry. It sounds crotchety, as if its saying: “It’s not yours”. I look down at the limp cadaver I’ve already stolen from Scratch and surmise that the old crow has a point. So I bend and lay it down. I do what’s right and give it back to the woods.