Superpowers, and Their Limitations

I have four superpowers, and one of them is finding mountain quail.

From the time I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted superpowers. It’s a fantasy fueled by reading lots of novels about exceptional children, and also a bit by the ESP experiments I was part of in elementary school in the early 1970s (spoiler alert: I was never able to see the playing card the tester was looking at).

In adulthood, I finally started to see that I did have some superpowers, but they were mundane. I share a Heyser Family knack for arriving at restaurants just before huge lines form. People tell me all sorts of really personal things and have no idea why they’re doing it.

When I started hunting mushrooms with Hank, I discovered a good one: Mushrooms talk to me. I’ll be looking around the forest and something tells me, Go there!, so I do, and there’s always a mushroom. I was desperate to have such a knack with game, but just as it was with the ESP experiments, I learned I was devastatingly normal.

Until I started hunting mountain quail.