Sisir Das

“above my head. I shrank away, but the hornbill made no attempt to attack me. He was relaxing in his home, which was a great hole in the tree trunk. Only the bird’s head and great beak were showing. He looked at me in rather a bored way, drowsily opening and shutting his eyes. ‘So many creatures live here,’ I said to myself. ‘I hope none of them is dangerous!’ At that moment the hornbill lunged at a passing cricket. Bill and tree trunk met with a loud and resonant ‘Tonk!’ I was so startled that I nearly fell out of the tree. But it was a difficult tree to fall out of! It was full of places where one could sit or even lie down. So I moved away from the hornbill, crawled along a branch which had sent out supports, and so moved quite a distance from the main body of the tree. I left its cold, dark”
― Ruskin Bond, The Essential Collection for Young Readers