The Magpie Thief

There was a girl that lived in a rooftop apartment. One morning, in the year of the monkey, just seven days after she had moved there, she woke up early, opened up her window and noticed that the sky couldn't be gloomier. Thick, white clouds covered the entirety of the once clear, blue sky and soon it started drizzling. "What a fine day to stay in and write my novel", she thought. She made some coffee and lied on her bed with her notebook, ready to continue from where she had left off.

Suddenly, a shadow fell onto her. She turned her head towards the window and saw a big magpie looking right back at her. "What a beautiful bird!", she thought. The magpie cawed.

"Well, good morning to you too", the girl said. "It seems I made a new friend", she thought.

The magpie jumped inside the room and after inspecting it, landed on a shelf with books and small decorative stuff, one of which was a present from her grandfather that had passed away long ago. The beloved object was not a pricey one, but it was priceless to her for emotional reasons. It was the oldest object she had and she took it with her to whichever apartment she had moved throughout the years. It was a small pendulum toy. On a very simple, metallic base, stood a stick-man design of a man riding a horse. The figures were made out of wire, with one, little, iron marble placed to represent the head of the rider and four more placed at the horses hoofs, which served as the stabilizer that kept the whole structure standing on merely the two, pointed feet of the rider that came in contact with the flat surface of the base. Just a simple tap and the rider would keep going and going.

The magpie cawed once more and then, it unexpectedly snatched the rider from his torso, with its beak. The girl tried to stop the magpie, but it was too late. The magpie spread its wings and flew out the window with the cherished object in its mouth. The girl stood at the window, looking at the magpie as it flew away.

"You fucking thief!" she intelligently yelled at the unintelligible animal.

As she was watching it, another unexpected turn of events happened. For inexplicable reasons or too many of them to count anyway, the magpie cawed again which resulted in the object getting released from its beak. The girl clearly saw the gleaming object falling down and landing inside a tall, bushy fence. The magpie, without even trying to reclaim its loot, flew further away until it disappeared inside the thick foliage of a grove of trees. The girl rushed down the external, spiral stair and run towards the bushy fence where her beloved rider lay. When she got there though, she noticed that the size of this bush was huge. It was about ten meters in length, three meters in height and a little less than a meter and a half in width.
"Oh, shit", she thought and started contemplating on how to go about it. She took a ladder and a flashlight. She first looked at the top part of the fence but she didn't find anything. Then she started looking deeper and deeper, trying to delouse every inch of that branchy chaos for her beloved rider, but still no luck.

She hopes that by the year of the rooster, she will have found what she is looking for.