" The rest of the week went uneventfully. Well, by my standards anyway. My canary arrived and promptly died. I’ve been through four of them so far and haven’t been able to keep them alive long enough to take them out to the gate in Sharpsburg. They are stupidly fragile and drop dead if you use any mean on them at all, try to feed them dog food, or squeeze them too tight. I’m running out of local pet shops, and Wyatt is getting tired of begging them to ship me yellow canaries. Hopefully, the next one would live long enough for my purpose. Wyatt was "

― Debra Dunbar , Satan's Sword (Imp, #2)