Birdy. William Wharton
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She checks the bars of the cage with her beak and nibbles some cuttlebone. Cuttlebone is from a fish; it has calcium and other minerals for birds. She constantly tries to talk to me, or maybe she’s trying to discover any other birds around. There’s a sad sound in the peep, interrogative, going up at the end, peeEEP? She opens her beak half way when she says it and of ten says it just as she leaves one perch for another. Perhaps it’s a signal to let other birds know she’s changing position. I don’t really know enough about canaries.
When it gets dark, I cover her cage with a cloth to protect her from drafts.
The next day is Sunday. I see her trying to bathe in the water cup so I put a saucer of water in the cage. She goes down immediately with a peep that’s different from the others, shorter, more like PEep? She stands on the edge of the dish, shakes her feathers impossibly fast, stretches out her wings to show feathers individually, then throws herself into the water with another short PEep? She goes in and out, splashing, wiggling. There’s a concentration, a total involvement; nothing passive. I’ve watched hundreds of pigeons take baths in water or in dust but it was slow motion compared to Birdie.
After she’s splashed all the water from the saucer and made a soggy mess out of the newspapers on the floor of the cage, she flies wildly around, almost crashing into the bars. Her flight feathers are so wet, they hang bedraggled, resting on the perch. The feathers around her face clump in little bunches. She dashes back and forth, from perch to perch, shaking, vibrating her whole body. Drops of water fly across the room even onto the lenses of the binoculars. They’re like comets charging into my miniature world.
Finally, most of the water shaken off, Birdie begins to preen herself. She takes each feather in her beak and combs it out to the tip. She leans back frequently to the oil sack at the tip of her tail and spreads a thin film of oil over the newly washed feathers, one at a time. The bath, from beginning till end, finishing with a satisfied flurry of fluffiness, takes almost two hours.
I’m really in love with Birdie now. She’s so dainty, so quick, so skilled, and she flies so gracefully. I want to have her fly in my room free but I’m afraid I’ll hurt or frighten her putting her back into the cage. It’s very hard to wait.
That afternoon, I give Birdie a first taste of treat food. I try peeping when I give it to her, the question peeps, peeEEP? I give treat food in a special cup shaped to fit between the bars of the cage and rest on the edge of the middle perch. I keep my hand as near to it as I can when she comes to eat.
The feed has a smell of anise and is sweet. I only put a few grains of seed in the dish. Birdie looks at me where I am with my hand near the food. She cocks her head and tries to see me from different angles. She comes close, then flies away. She pretends she isn’t interested at all and goes down to eat the regular seed. I know she’s curious. At last she comes up and quickly steals one seed out of the dish. She goes to the other end of the perch to eat it. She queeEEP?s at me and I try to queeEEP? back. She comes again and takes another seed. She eats it looking me in the eyes. I don’t move.
She puts one foot onto the little dish to hold it and eats the rest of the seeds. Her foot’s within an inch of my fingers. I can see the tiny pink scales and light veins running down her legs next to my own massive whorled fingerprints. I can smell her, the smell of eggs when they’re still in the shell, probably the smell of feathers. I don’t remember just that smell from pigeons. Pigeon smell is musky with something of old dust; this is a thin perfume.
When she’s finished, she lets go of the dish and wipes her bill on the perch but doesn’t go away.
I queeEEP? at her but she only looks at me. I queeEEP? again. She sees me; she’s questioning what I really am. It lasts maybe ten seconds, a long time for a bird. Then she goes down to the floor of the cage and eats a few grains of sand. I’m very happy.
Next day, I think about Birdie all day at school. I don’t even want to look at people. People can be so gross, especially grown-ups. They grunt and groan, make swallowing and breathing noises all the time. They smell like putrid meat. They crawl around with heavy movements and stand as if they’re nailed to the ground.
At lunch, walking around the track, I practice jumping and turning around. It’s hard to do. It’s much easier if you do it when you’re running. Standing still and jumping up is almost impossible. You’ve got to twist hard enough to get around in the little time you have from the jump and yet not so fast you’re still twisting when you hit the ground. You have to twist back against yourself with your shoulders in the air. I almost do it once by getting down in a crouch and taking an easy jump up and a slow twist. For a second, it feels right, a little bit free, but then I hit the ground wrong and fall. I get too loose up there. I have to speed up my body thinking somehow.
When I come into my room after school, Birdie queeps at me. We keep queeping back and forth while I change from school clothes. I have to go down again and sweep off the back porch. If my mother ever gets an idea I’m spending too much time with a bird, it’ll be like the pigeons all over again.
After the gas tank, I hid my pigeon suit up in the rafters of the garage. I know she’s still looking for it, says she’s going to burn it – going to burn it for my own good, she says.
I can’t figure what she thinks is unhealthy about birds. Does she want me to spend all my time chasing after girls at school or making myself the strongest man in the world, like Al; or maybe hopping up cars and tearing them apart. What’s so healthy about that?
I don’t want any trouble, that’s all. I do a good job on the porch and water the flowers on the window sill. I pick up some papers and a couple of old rusty cans from the back yard. Kids are always throwing tin cans over the fence. If my mother’d stop running out and shaking her mop or broom at them, they’d quit. I still haven’t figured out where she keeps those baseballs. They must be worth a fortune.
Back in my room, I get out some treat food and walk quietly over to the cage. Birdie’s queeping with me. I’m listening to hear if she has anything else to say; I can’t hear anything different. Canary is still a foreign language to me. I got so I could understand most of the things pigeons have to say. They don’t really talk, they only signal each other.
I slide the dish between the wires of the cage onto the perch. She comes up to the perch and stands on the other end. Now, there’s definitely a change in her voice. It’s still queep but much louder, like somebody saying, ‘really?’ It’s qurEEPP?, from deeper in her throat. I can hear it but I can’t do it; I give her a regular queeEEp? back. After a half dozen of these loud qurEEPP?s, she hops left and right along the perch over to me. With each hop she completely turns her body direction to the perch, at the same time keeping her head toward me. Each hop lines the other eye up with mine. She’s shifting her vision from eye to eye as she advances. Incredible, almost impossible to describe, but she does it without seeming to notice.
When Birdie gets to the dish, she puts her feet on it the same as last time and takes her first seed, shelling it without going back along the perch. She has her wing and leg muscles flexed to jump back if I make a move. I’m yearning to shift my finger through the bars of the cage and touch her foot. I feel caged out of her cage.
When she’s finished with the treat food, I stay there with my hand on the cup and bring my face up till my eyes are looking through the bars not more than a foot from where she’s standing. Birdie stands there and looks at me, cocking her head one way, then the other. She gives a qurEEPP?, then jumps down to the perch below. I watch her eat some seed, then some gravel. Being really close like this is even better than watching through binoculars.
When Birdie shits, it’s a semi-hardened mass much smaller than pigeon shit. She tosses it off with a slight thumping of her ass. Most times it’s a single flip, but sometimes it takes two or three. She shits once every five minutes or so. The shit itself has three parts I can see. There’s the outside part which is clear as water, just wetness, then there’s the white part, more solid, something like cream, and then the center which is brownish-black, blacker than human shit and somewhat shaped to come out the ass, like human shit. There’s practically no smell.
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