My name is Zelda. I am a Cormorant.

A three-pronged treble hook pierced my bill and my tongue, fusing my mouth both open and shut at the same time.
I am a master hunter whose life is defined by the strike, and I was silenced by a silver trap that made it impossible for me to swim or eat.

By every law of nature, I was already gone.

I had two choices.

Crawl into the reeds and die.
Or do something no animal had ever done before.

I am Zelda. I am Queen. I chose the latter.

I walked to the glass door of a hospital’s ER and knocked.

Yes, I really did this. It is not fiction.

What I did made news around the world.
But one person noticed a detail few others did.

I knocked on two different doors on two different days.
The first day I was not seen.
So, the next day, I came back.

That small detail, having the courage to return and ask again, is why he wrote my story. It is what humans forget and what animals remember.

It takes courage to knock.
It takes a Queen to knock twice.

Zelda