Most mornings, Sister Edgar and Sister Gracie make the drive “past the monster concrete expressway into lost streets” to an abandoned section of South Bronx known in “jocular police parlance” as the Bird. Avian wildlife find homes here among “hillocks of slashed tires laced with thriving vine” and demolished buildings strewn with needles and lined with derelicts and junkies. Edgar and Gracie go about their good work in the slum, distributing food and scouting salvageable junk to fund their humanitarian efforts.