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Where We Left Off:
Ollie and Gus looked into the tragic story of why one of the chipmunks had lost most of its tail.
The DaVinci Code:
June 29, 2026—It was a normal morning like any other. Gus and Ollie were outside on their early morning patrol and critter snack distribution. We were watching Hazel and her fawns, Mel and Liza, who left the garden wall in search of more delicious seeds at Big Rock.
As usual, Gus wanted to do his own thing without regard to where Ollie’s chariot is able to go. I believed Gus would give me a little break and at least stay within our borders. He went around to the front of the building and, from what I could tell, he seemed content to wait there for signs of chipmunks.
I had parked Ollie around the other side of the building where there were plenty of birds to watch. Ollie loves observing creatures of all sizes. So far, I’ve only heard him talking to the birds, but I know he can talk to anyone. I worked up a gross sweat walking back and forth between checking on both of them.
Of course, one of the times I went to check on Gus, he was gone. Thus began a search for him which meant Ollie was alone at Big Rock. Eventually, I was able to stop panicking and found Gus casually snooping next door. Somehow I missed him when I headed down the driveway and looked around their cars. Gus was further back in their yard at a spot where he could have slipped through the next yard over. Luckily, I found him and carried him back to our place. He decided he wanted to stay in Oliver’s patio. If he could stay in one spot, then I could go back to Ollie and make sure he was safe.
I walked around the building in back and stopped in my tracks. Hazel and her fawns, Mel and Liza, were right in front of Oliver! They were technically making their way around the rocks eating the food meant for the much smaller critters. I kept my distance until they left. They acted like Ollie and his buggy were part of the scenery and didn’t go close to him at all. Whew!
It was time to relocate. I chauffeured Ollie down the bumpy grass until we reached his patio. There were happy house finches and other tiny birds visiting the feeder. Gus came over, sniffed at Ollie through the screen of the buggy, and walked away. Luckily, he only went a few feet and got comfortable on large slate pavers.
A peculiar sound from the sky got my attention. We have (way too many) engine noises including the usual road vehicles, lawn equipment, and planes. The sound I heard seemed a little weird, but definitely similar to a small Cessna plane.
“What the heck is that noise?” I said.
The Grumpy Old Man was on the back porch having coffee. I called to him and told him to look at the strange thing in the sky. I wasn’t sure he could hear me, but I pointed emphatically. All he said was, “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen those things before.” And then he went back to whatever he was talking about that I couldn’t hear above the noise.
Gus came over and sat next to my feet. He, Ollie, and I looked up at the overcast sky and stared at this flying machine. It had a parachute, a kind of long sleeve that looked like a sleeping bag (more accurately things hang gliders put their legs in), and definitely a propeller not a jet engine. When we got back to the office, research began immediately!
“That looked like a flying machine designed by Leonardo DaVinci,” I said.
“He called it an ornithopter. I wouldn’t want to be in one.” Ollie sat on the floor to groom himself.
Gus agreed. “Me neither. Too loud. But I would love to inspect one personally.”
Gus loves machines. From small ride-on lawn mowers to big excavators and dump trucks, he loves to climb all over them. They can’t be turned on though. The noise and vibrations do not agree with him.
I had a short video of the unusual flying machine. I didn’t know how to reverse search with video so I used keywords: parachute, propeller, one-person, flying. It took a couple of changes to get away from the highest aeronautic machines for one person and find the name powered parachute. The lightest version of these flying machines carries only five gallons of fuel. There are more sophisticated ones that are electric-powered but only have 20 minutes of flight time which are perfectly named Jetson.
I read from the websites that I had opened in tabs. These powered flying machines were supposedly safe because they fly at slow speeds and the parachute is always open. In the event of stalling, the parachute allows a safe descent.
“Would you ever go in one?” Gus asked me.
“I’d want to trust it first. But I wouldn’t be able to trust it unless I flew it. Yet, I won’t fly it unless I trust it not to fall apart or drop right out of the sky.” It was a Catch-22. I’m not afraid of heights. I’m afraid of crashing. That applies to regular air travel as well. I’m not a happy person about being on an airplane, but I like being somewhere else quicker than driving and without traffic. There could be traffic, but I wouldn’t know about it.
Case Findings:
Oliver, Gus, and a couple of their humans watched a strange flying machine go over the Winchester-Nabu property. They had research what that sky vehicle could be. Single-person planes, helicopters, and parachute machines had more styles than we thought. The parachute was the key to narrowing down what the heck it was. We discovered that it matched machines called powered parachutes. They probably don’t go very far, but there is an airport nearby with a lot of Cessna planes and the like.
Case Status: Closed
