Excerpt: The Nightwatcher

Useless facts where a specialty of Mac’s. Touring the country with her mom in their rusty VW Bug made it easy to pick those sorts of things up.

Things about hummingbirds for example.

A hummingbird’s heart rate can reach up to 1,260 beats per minute. With the way her heart was beating against her chest, she was fairly certain she could give a firsthand account of how those little birds felt.

A hummingbird can beat its wings up to 80 times per second, which not only allows them to hover like they do, but creates that humming noise they’re named for. She wonders if hummingbirds are nocturnal, cos it sounds like there’s a few of them flitting around her head.

Percentage wise, the hummingbird has the largest brain of all birds—summat along the lines of 4.2% of its total body weight. If Mac had used anywhere near that much of her brain, there’s a good chance she would have stayed indoors like the crazy old lady at the creepy house had suggested and she would be curled up in a nice warm bed instead of flat on her back in the middle of nowhere, completely paralyzed.

The cold crept up her legs and into her stomach, flooding through her at an alarming rate. Her heart rate slowed, whether it was reaching a normal human rate or what she wasn’t quite sure. What she did know was that she had lived four years longer than the world’s oldest hummingbird; which had died at a ripe old age of twelve.

God she wished she'd stayed inside.

©2009 Tobie James