A Few Minutes Alone, Please

I hear him in the other room, where he's in his cage, upset I won't come get him. If I just sit quietly as I can, not moving, his screams will taper, then abate. He will think I have gone.

I just need a few minutes to myself.

The little terrier mix, Lulu, wants to go out and bite the tires of the lawnmower Jonesy is pushing around the yard. L yips in frustration.

TK, our Rottie mix, harrumphs from her dog bed under the kitchen table. Ignored again, she sighs.

It's Sunday and the week is about to begin, and I cannot breathe.

I should be folding laundry, buying food for the week, looking for and applying for a job. I should be weeding and scrubbing and sweeping.

In the novel Allen Stein, Matthew Stadler writes about Sunday being the "bruised, tail end of the weekend" if I remember it right. I have carried this quote or its semblance around for years. Allen Stein is a book I took months to finish the last chapter--it was too painful a subject, and too beautiful in its language. I did not want it to end. (Lolita, though, I cannot seem to persevere through, despite its lyricism.)

At last, SSW stops.

Not for long. He starts his repertoire of pleadings. The insistent mememe's!, the call he uses when he sits on top of fridge when I am cooking and my head is about to split from the noise. Then there is his upward glissandoing whooooeeep! whoooeeeeep! Then, the three-noted wree--eee-op!

I let him out. He drags his beak along the kitchen table in tight circles, repeatedly, churruping with each cycle. He hisses as he cleans his feet, as he reaches back to groom his wings and back. He moves his lower jaw up and down, mimicking me chewing gum.

He has a slight limp, a subtle shwawush when he walks across the table. For two days he has been holding his left foot up when he sits, but he can use it to grasp a piece of food, climb on his cage, or grip my shirt. He misgauged a landing two nights ago in the dark hallway, taking the corner. He might've torqued his foot in the missed calculation. I squeeze his toes and lets me, only bites, I think, out of frustration, not pain. Is his foot swollen or warm, is he not gripping my hand as readily as with his other foot? I cannot tell. He is a parrot of fragility, made of air, his voice excluded. I give him minute, regular, aliquots of oral pain meds to little improvement.

He is trying to open my mouth with his beak, rubbing his face against my lips. He bobs his head as he regurgitates. I love you, too, I say.

He is quiet on my shoulder, and I can think. If even for a moment. His feathers rustle as he maneuvers around my shirt collar, and he utters a few, soft staccato chup-chups.

I get him to step off my shoulder onto his rope perch and he begins his subdued Donald Duck routine, if DD's speech was blurred and unintelligible, muttering to himself.

I put a few cheerios in a box and he purrs, his food-happy acknowledgment. He hold a piece in his left, bad foot, and trills as he eats, spilling a fine silt onto the kitchen counter.

The dogs are silent, laying on the floor of the kitchen. Lulu is looking out the window, TK watching the bird make crumbs she cannot reach. I should feed the four mammals, and fill the bird feeder outside--the house finches and house sparrows fighting over the dregs of spilled sunflower seeds on the ground.

SSW is shuffling across the counter, looking for other things to nibble now that the cereal is gone. The rim of a glass, the edge of a tupperware container, the zipper on the lunch bag. He cocks his head at the knife block, at me, at the dogs. He flies to his cage and climbs to the door to sit and stare at me, bite the fabric that lines the cage top.

He then flies to the top of the fridge to commence the shredding in a box, and the Donald Duck impression begins again. I know right now he is happy, churring to himself, despite the fact it is Sunday evening and most of the world is on edge, the week about to tumble upon us.

I Have a Stalker, and He is Six Inches Tall

Someone is chewing my clog and pulling on my pant cuff as I brush my teeth. Someone is watching me from the shower rod while I am in the bath, and he is shouting at me. Someone is chasing me on foot like a kitten after a string, pigeon toed feet racing after me. Someone is flying from room to room, like a green shadow. Someone is in my sheets, chewing the fabric. Someone is trying to bite me as I sweep the kitchen floor. And someone is trying to get under the crack of the closed bedroom door, running his beak back and forth along the wood floor.

His nickname is Bug and I am afraid I might accidentally squish him like one.

The dogs make a wide path as he passes, but the senile cat takes him for a friend before I steer her away, saving her a nip in the nose.

He wants death to all washcloths, all rags, all laundry folding. He wants mememememe. That is until he needs his nails clipped. Then I become the Hated One, the one he shall inflict many a wound upon the slow sleight of hand.

I have to walk softly and slowly and I need to look down at where I am going.

What is that scritching sound? What is that silhouette on the edge of my periphery, pupils locked on my back, wings about to take off?

That Jagged Crescedo

I grew up with cats. They are quiet, sleep most of the day, and mine have been only rarely annoying when I step in a fur ball-vomit pile in the middle of the night. The most pesky thing my current cat does is purr all night long on my pillow.

After college I went to the pound to find the gentlest, calmest, friendliest dog there. I left with a red lab cross who infrequently barked, and he and I spent 14 years gazing into each other's eyes. He did have a strong hatred of the UPS truck and deep-woofed at it when it went by. I always knew when I got a package.

I moved in with my partner a few years down the line and we now had two dogs, hers and mine. They liked each other. They barked only when necessary, but two dogs are louder than one.

In my dog's senior years, I decided to get another dog, a third dog, mind you, a dog to help me bridge the gap of sure grief that would come with my big red dog's eventual death. I lost my mind. I adopted a terrier cross. She had been abandoned at the vet clinic by her previous owner, and yes, she put her head on my shoulder when I carried her. She was really good at showing you her belly, too. She wore me down. I took her home.

The first thing I noticed about the small gal was she paced. From window to window, barking. She had big ideas, from a 30 pound body, that her territory to protect included anything she could see. This meant even the dogs being walked down the road across the creek from our house. Arfarfarf.... Click click, her nails went.

She barks all day--at dogs, children on bicycles, car door closing outside our house, baby strollers, the mailman, kids walking by, roller bladers, lawnmowers, garbage trucks, guys playing football, cats, rabbits, squirrels...

After I adopted her, and the thunder storms started, I realized I acquired a whining, high-pitched yelping, fearful friend. She trembled, she paced, she got as much of her body as she could under the bed.

I have had her for five years now, and well, I guess I am used to her noisy ways. Once, just once, I would like a nap, a deep, luscious, uninterrupted nap, free from that startling bark.

My lovely red dog died two winters ago, and we did not want any more pets, no dogs, no cats. The maw of his absence was too ragged and deep.

And then there's the fact that I am not a morning person. I like to wake up slowly, have the day seep, not zap in. So adopting a parrot seems counterintuitive to my basic core.

I am not sure what overtook me. Maybe it was watching The Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Maybe it was the fact I could hear him screaming from the entrance to the humane society. He had been a conure on the loose, and the cops had brought him in. I mean, a parrot with a record? I should have had some idea.

Oh, Sweet William, oh Bubbie, our green friend. Your morning exuberance has creeped in and I no longer wince when you call repeatedly from the top of the fridge before I have had any caffeine. You've been asleep for 10-12 hours and you have a lot to say. You just want to share. And you want your damn breakfast.

Breaking Up With Bubbie

Jonesy has a multitude of nicknames for SSW. The list can be a little nauseating to the outsider, so I won't reveal it. She does call him Bubbie, maybe because she's a Southerner. She calls him that when she is madly in love with him, kissy-faced and good-bird-ing it to him.

Regardless, when SSW/Bubbie bit me 10 times in five minutes, I had to break up with him. The list of no's: no more shoulder rides, no more free snacks fed directly to him (root around already, dammit!), no more freedom while we ate dinner (that fork, connected to the soft flesh of my hand, needs to be avian-free), no more picking up. Scream all you want, dude, because you've pissed off Mama.

I mean, how rude, this biting fest, this mawing on the one who feeds you, your savior from the shelter, your daily bread. What a little bastard, says Jonesy, when I tell her what he did.

It's a pain in the ass for me. I duck to get out of his way as he flies through the hall, and I almost bump my head on doorknob. He gets on my shoulder and I make him step up to his rope perch, over and over and over again. The numbskull figures it out. That one, stay off the shoulder, just until she weakens.

Jonesy puttered around the kitchen talking to SSW: Now look what you've done. Your girlfriend dumped you. She doesn't even want to talk to you. At all.

I didn't. He could go sulk his little green ass in some other corner. I had wounds to heal.

Topics He Insists We Cover

1. O! immediate abandonment from the next room, tho I can fly and find thee!

2. My minions, or those other large, bite-able beasts

3. I bite because I love thee--let me count the ways

4. How my breakfast needs vast improvements

5. I shall shat near your coffee cup whenever I please, and land upon your dinner plate, thank you very much

6. Upon finding your smallest skin flaws with my impeccable tongue, a study in imperfections

And why not, Jeeves?

Here are Sir Sweet William's loyal staff:

Jonesy, parrot butler #1










Sara, parrot butler #2