It was another hot day. I had gone to the window to look for a sign of rain when a blur of colour at the back of the garden took my eye. A pheasant — a plump, proud cock pheasant — strutted on the lawn. I called to Maddy. She put down her newspaper and joined me at the window.

The pheasant pecked at the dry August grass and then walked with stiff, hesitant steps to the border Maddy had planted in the spring. The blacks and golds of its wing feathers shimmered against the soft green of the hostas and ferns.

Maddy watched transfixed. "You're the artist" she said, "fetch your brushes."

"I don't do birds."

"So make a start" she urged, but I stayed next to Maddy, watching the pheasant browse among the ferns until it dipped its head and disappeared under the ramshackle willow fence that separated us from Pearson's Wood and the wheat fields beyond.

Later that afternoon I tried to make a rough sketch of the pheasant but the pencil felt awkward between my finger and thumb, and the shape wouldn't come. The heat made it hard to concentrate and, anyway, watercolour landscapes were more my thing.

Through the conservatory door I could hear Maddy talking to her mother on the phone. She told her about the visit of the pheasant and I took up my pencil again. If only I could just get the eye — that would be a start. Then I heard Maddy describing the bird. How radiant it had seemed, how miraculous. This struck me as terribly exaggerated — it was only a pheasant. But when I looked at the hideous scribble I had made on the sketchpad I felt sick and appalled, utterly at odds with the world, as if I had caught myself dying.

Chris Powici is a writer and teacher. He lives in Perthshire, Scotland. His poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies and a previous flashquake piece, "Push", earned him a Pushcart nomination.