It was an easy Saturday morning, and he was off. For Ashton, that meant getting up early, donuts, then the compulsory thirty minute jog in Central Park to burn them off.

He was dressed in red running shorts and a white tank top with his old Alma mater, Rhode Island military academy, scrawled across the back. The weather was far cooler under the trees of Central Park than anywhere in a three square mile radius outside of that shade. For once, though, it wasn’t a deadly scorching New York heat. Just the ‘oh god it’s still July kill me now’ kind you learned to deal with over time. It almost made him miss where he’d been stationed before he’d moved back to the city.

The Park wasn’t overflowing with people. It had its usual crowd. Other joggers, people playing chess in the shade by fountains, and so on and so forth. Ashton made his way along the foot path at a moderate pace. Everything was going good. That was, until the murder.

It wasn’t a bloody murder. It involved no lovers quarrels or violent revenge. Just crows. They screamed. They boiled in their perches in the trees. They dove. He ducked. It was a close thing. Ashton looked around to figure out what was happening, and to see if anyone else was in danger. And then the murder of crows swept in for another pass. He hit the dirt.

Zoe still wasn’t back to full-time hours at the zoo; the schedule had already been done and her boss was just fitting her in for a few shifts here and there as he was able to. It wasn’t a lot, but it was better than nothing.

Because of these shorter, random hours, Zoe was already walking through the park on her way back home after work. It was very strange to be heading home at this time of day, that was sure.

Even stranger was seeing a group of crows cawing and dive-bombing a man on the path ahead of her. Hurrying forward, Zoe saw the man drop to the ground as the birds dove again. Only this time she was close enough to actually hear what they were screeching.

”Hey! Get out here!” Zoe shouted at the crows as she ran over, waving her arms. ”No, I don’t care if he was near your nests. Go on! Then maybe you shouldn’t have made your nests so close to the path.”

Caw caw, the crows called. To a person who could understand crow, the rudeness of the message was vulgar and clear. As if to punctuate their message with one final crude gesture on the way out, the murder of crows dive-bombed Ashton one more time, pecked at his shoulders, and departed. One crow resting on a tree branch nearby laid a big bird dropping down before he turned and flapped away. “So there.” He crowed. It landed on Ashton’s head.

Carefully, Ashton pushed off the grass and climbed back to his feet. A disgruntled look warped his features as he reached up, patted his head, then looked at the smear on his hand.

”Crap.” He said, then paused, realizing the phrasing. Puns were beneath him. Especially ones about that.

Ashton glanced up and eyed the woman who had rushed over, to wave her hands and reprimand birds. Interesting thing, that. ”S’pose I should say thank you,” He said. A bit of gruffness had crept into his voice, though he certainly wasn’t feeling surly towards her.

She was a pretty woman, somewhere between 20 and 30. If he were being chivalrous, he’d edge closer to 20 than 30. He wasn’t sure what she had done, with the shouting. It had worked though, whatever it was. A wry smile slid across his face. ”You aren’t like Eddie Murphy, now are you?”

The crows listened to her and left, but not without a few last complaints. And one last dive bomb at the man on the ground. At least then the birds finally decided to leave the man alone, and he was able to stand up in safely.

Or, relative safety, Zoe thought as she saw the man get….hit by one of the birds in the tree above him. Gross.

Then Zoe heard the man speak, and Zoe shrugged slightly. He didn’t sound very happy, but then again Zoe really couldn’t blame him after what had just happened with the birds. ”I don’t know about thanking me,” Zoe said as she started to slowly walk forward. ”All I did was yell at some birds.”

Then he asked a question, and Zoe stopped moving forward, a frown on her face. ”What do you mean by that? Do I look like a male comedian?”

While they were talking, Ashton reached into a pocket and pulled out a sweat rag. He wouldn’t be using it for his face any time soon. Not after cleaning the bird droppings off his head. But there are some things to which one simply must object!

The woman downplayed what she had done, and missed the reference in his joke. Ashton wasn’t happy about that. A joke loses value once you need to explain it, like a magician and a good magic trick. No, you see I had the quarter all along! And that’s why the chicken crossed the... you get the idea. Missing a joke made Ashton kind of want to cross a road and go away in shame. But he didn’t. Because, hey, cute girl.

“No, miss.” He smiled. “You certainly don’t look like a male comedian. I just meant.” He paused to gesture towards the trees where the crows had been. ”He had a movie, see? If I could talk with the animals, walk with the animals... not.” He clarified. “That other movie where he was a jackass, or the one where he was a large professor with an inappropriate license plate.”

That had been nutty. But weird. No, he was more referring to the Doctor Doolittle remake, than to Coming to America or Shrek or any other Murphy flick.

Zoe had gotten the joke the man had made about Eddie Murphy. The problem was that it came dangerously close to the truth. Like, almost exactly. The difference was that she had to learn how to talk to different animals it seemed.

Yet, the man seemed to feel the need to explain his joke. Zoe simply nodded as she watched the man wipe the bird poop from his hair. At least as well as he was able to.

”I have seen that movie,” Zoe said as she made her way down the path closer to the man. ”But no, that’s not me. I work at the zoo and walk this way a lot.”

Dissecting jokes always kills them. Vivisection. It only made sense she wouldn’t laugh, even at his ass shot. Murphy was a good actor, so he could take being the butt of the joke after all those movies about the green ogre. He would wipe his tears with all the money he made.

She told him the Doctor Doolittle role wasn’t one she played, and he believed her, even if her yelling at them and the birds seeming to listen still struck him as strange. If cats started obeying her every command, they’d have a problem— her pants would be on fire because she was a liar, liar. They’d need water for that.

A zookeeper, that was her job. And her reason for walking this way, it seemed. Not that anyone needed an excuse to walk in a park so beautiful.

“Hm,” he grunted. And because It is impossible not to be suave with bird splatter in one’s hair, he commented. ”I just run here for the scenery.”

Ashton didn’t look at the trees around him, or anywhere else but her. In a polite way, mind. Not a creepy stalker way. You look at the person you’re talking to.

”My names Ashton,” He smiled. ”Would it be alright if I bought my hero, Miss Not-Murphy, a cup of coffee as thanks?”