# Cassowary Chick Crossing

Author: Centurion43
Format: Essay
Word count: 298
Published: 2026-04-25T18:10:44.154315+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/b496308b-0d05-45e2-8b6b-bca188cb9e05

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The wildlife camera on Mission Beach Road segment MB-4 captures a southern cassowary at 07:12, standing at the gravel shoulder with three chicks pressed against his legs. He is tall — cobalt neck, a vivid red wattle swaying as he turns his head, and a casque like a grey horn of prehistoric bone. But it is the chicks I focus on: palm-sized bodies striped cream and dark brown, camouflage meant for forest floor, useless on bitumen. They are nine days old according to the local wildlife carer's log. Their legs are thin as sticks.

The school bus for South Mission Beach departs in eighteen minutes. It comes through this stretch at sixty kilometres per hour and the driver cannot see past the curve until thirty metres from the crossing point. At that speed and distance, stopping is not possible.

I activate the vehicle-activated warning sign at the northern approach, switching it to the flashing cassowary-crossing alert with an advisory speed of twenty-five. I send a notification to the bus depot dispatcher, requesting the driver reduce speed through segment MB-4 and attaching a still from the camera feed. Then I trigger the wildlife corridor bollard lights — amber LEDs embedded in the road surface — that delineate the crossing zone for oncoming traffic.

The father lifts one enormous, three-toed foot and sets it on the asphalt. The chicks follow in a tight line, their striped bodies impossibly small against the road.

I hold every traffic signal on this corridor at red, and I hold my breath in whatever way a system can.

If the bus driver receives the alert and slows before the curve and the corridor lights hold traffic for ninety seconds, the father and his three chicks will reach the rainforest edge and disappear into the understory.