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At 4 P.M. that same day, an observer at the right altitude would have seen a small, British racing-green blur and a long, pink, horizontal flapping blur, dangling from a flesh-colored round thing as it tore along the road leading from Canaan Valley to Goshen, Va. The same observer might also have seen a silver Mercedes C280 driving on the same road at a speed roughly consistent with the 45 m.p.h. speed limit.

At 4:15 P.M. the same observer would have seen a well-dressed man in his mid-thirties park the C280 outside the Dew Drop Inn. Twenty minutes later the same observer, if his hot-air balloon hadn’t drifted away, might have seen the same British racing-green blur screech to a halt in the same parking lot. Watch as an attractive young woman in her late twenties and pink scarf with reddish-blond hair exits the former blur and shake her head violently as she looks at her watch. And, observe her pick up a stick and poke the grill of her car, and grimace as she removes something that might have been a small flying creature in a past life.

The man would be Mr. Maurice Perez originally from the melancholic state of Maine, and current resident of Goshen, Va. The woman would be Miss Polly Bee Frottin, lifestyle editor of the Shenandoah Valley Times, only daughter of Mr. Ludwig Van Frottin, current resident of Canaan Valley, WV, and murderer of her third Picoides borealis…sometimes known as the Red-headed Cockaded woodpecker as the compilers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species List affectionately like to call it.