To My Most Beloved Owner,

Know that I have returned. Battered, windswept, and frankly deserving of more seed than you currently have in that dispenser, but returned nonetheless. What follows is a truthful account of my journey — which I have taken the liberty of upgrading from "errand" to "odyssey," because I think we both know it was.

It began in Orlando, Florida — a land of theme park thermals, insufferable tourists, and pelicans who regard themselves as my intellectual equals. They are not. I departed at dawn with your message secured to my leg, the warm Florida air filling my wings like sails on some magnificent feathered vessel. The sprawl of Central Florida unrolled beneath me like a map I did not need, and I pressed northward with the singular purpose of a soul who has something very important to do and would very much like to be done with it.

The journey to Grand Rapids was, in a word, ambitious. Georgia was tolerable. Tennessee attempted to kill me with crosswinds and did not succeed, though not for lack of trying. Ohio was Ohio — I have nothing further to add on the matter. And Michigan — cold, grey, familiar Michigan — received me with the kind of weather that suggests it was not expecting company. I landed. I delivered. I ate a regrettable insect somewhere near Kalamazoo and have chosen not to speak of it further.

And now I am home. The full circuit complete. Orlando to Grand Rapids and back again — a route that no atlas celebrates and no monument commemorates, but which I completed nonetheless, without GPS, without complaint (well, some complaint), and without losing a single letter.