Sparrows, Chickadees and a Wren

Did you know there are birds awake at 4:30 in the morning? Well, there are. Cheerful birds. At 4 freakin 30. They sit in the tree outside my window chirping, chirping, chirping. Meanwhile I lie in bed wishing they’d shut the hell up and I could go back to sleep. But, of course, they don’t and I don’t. I just lie there looking at the shadow the leaves make on the muslin curtain as it gently bellows up and back; a breathing canvass. I lie there wondering if the birds are really as happy as they sound. After all, what does a melancholy sparrow sound like?

At 5 o’clock I harrumph my way out of bed and down to the kitchen. By now the chickadees are going at it – chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee and I like them better because it seems to me they have something to say, unlike the frivolous sparrows who are probably just gossiping. I make myself a cup of dark, thick coffee and enjoy a rare moment with the sliding glass door wide open, Sweet William still perched in his bed, safe from escaping, safe from himself. And he’s quiet – another rarity.

There’s a small dog curled up like a furry little comma at my feet -- a tiny, spotty, smelly, skinny dog. She rolls over, begging for love. On her belly there’s a fresh Frankenstein slash of a scar and it reminds me that she’s been through hell. She’s been over bred, neglected, starved and who knows what else. It reminds me that people are capable of incredible cruelty and I wonder what I’d do if I ever met the woman who abused and neglected her. But that’s probably never going to happen and for all my imagined bravado I’d more than likely just turn away, disgusted.

They named her Ya Ya (she’s a Chihuahua mix) at the shelter where she just came from, the good place with the good people who rescued her from her very bad situation. We named her Wren, so she’s now Wrennie Ya Ya. It seems to fit her. Serious, but she wants to be fun. And she will be fun, once she heals up. I won’t go through the list of her maladies but let’s just say that she takes more pills than Elvis. For a while we had medicine bottles and ointments all over the kitchen but then Sara arranged them in a bowl, the bottles and tubes sticking out at angles, arranged like a Harry and David gift basket.

She’s now sleeping at my feet, sprawled trustingly on a floofy bed, snoring. I can’t help but marvel at her resilience – abused for years but still ready to accept love. And a comfortable bed. A belly scratch also goes a long way. So I’d better get busy, there’s lots of belly scratchin’ to make up for.

In Lieu of Jonesy

I know it's just not the same, and I am not really very funny like she is, but here I am. The parrot loves her best, and I write more on the blog.

I am currently boiling down rhubarb with sugar into a sauce to make, in the future, an Edwardian Pink Shocker. I am not joking: http://www.pbs.org/manorhouse/treats/prog04.html On this site, you can take the Snob Quiz as well. Who said PBS has no sense of humor?

The bird is pacing on his perch, wings out and in and out, trying a series of different calls to get my attention. Now he is pretending to chew. The cat is pawing at the glass door, the dogs are watching the yard for intruders. The ancient cat just limped into the kitchen for a snack.

I am thinking about how if I knew what was good for me I would give up sugar, booze, whining, driving, butter, starch, swearing, and fried foods. Alas, I am flawed.

Just like my pets are flawed--just now the dog nipped the cat and the other dog nipped the nipper. This resulted in scolding. The old cat is oblivious, moving soft food around in her dish from side to side.

My parrots nails are too long, I bite mine, I cannot clip my dogs' nails due to their utter refusals. We all keep making more.

I should go for a walk, read some poems, eat an apple.

The old cat wandered off and now is yowling from the basement, which sounds mournful, like she is lost. I will go retrieve her bony self and squeeze her a little, so that she will start to purr and we will look out onto the yard and whistle back at the birds.

Post Earache

I have resurfaced. For a few weeks, the mere heft of dragging my muscles and bones from one room to the other had me flummoxed and exhausted. Velocity stalled, stuttered.

Today I got my appetite back, and coincidentally, said goodbye to the last of my antibiotics. God bless drugs to squelch ear and throat infections.

The dark chocolate with espresso beans is kaput. I gobbled almost an entire small pizza. The bird gnawed at the crust, always using his left food as the grabber, the right foot as the stander. His eating foot always looks like he's making a fist. I love this. Then he bit Jonesy quite hard for having a water bottle too close to his body as he clung to her collar as she drank.

He bites when he's tired, and he was up way past his bedtime, which is 7 or 8, so he can get 12 hours of sleep, like any good tropical bird should. Up an hour or two past his tucked into his box time. I wonder if we left him up as late as he wanted if he would go to bed ever, or crash out in corner like a kid at a slumber party?

This leads to this question: Can the bird make the best choices for himself? Like flying outside, so No. For wanting to eat more nuts than he should eat in a week: No. Biting the hand that feeds you: No.

But he's a Smoocher, a Snuggler, a Dancer, and Singer, and a Scamp. He nods in affirmation of the list. He says, Djesssss.

A mercurial, contradictory creature. Indeed.

Movie, Cake, and Birds

I just started to get a sore throat. I noticed it while I was trying to savor a slice of flourless chocolate cake my friend John made, while simultaneously watching the movie Old Joy. The movie is a lot like Rivers and Tides, but with two humans and a dog in it and a little bit of dialogue. So of course, I adored it. The dog, Lucy, carries different sticks in her mouth throughout most of it.

Earlier, I had been thinking about someone who offered me her sun conure this week with no hesitation after she heard I had a dusky-headed. She wasn't kidding, and I totally know why. I told Sue about her and she said, too, Yeah, I know what she means.

Volume.
Mess.
Demands.

I guess you can hear a sun conure for blocks away, the loudest and most colorfully plummaged of the wee parrots. My hearing at breakfast is already challenged as I try to enjoy a cup of tea and toast. It seems we have trained the bird to scream while we eat so that we will give him a bit of our food. It's delightful. I am not one who can even make sentences for a half hour or so after waking, so the shrieking takes a lot to just be.

Charm.
Silliness.
Vivacity.

He shuffles around on the floor like a small man looking for a ride or for directions to the bus stop. Are you going that way, he asks? And when it gets dark, he ambles into his cage and into his shoebox, where he peeps and tweedles and shushshh's til my heart is aflame with love. How small a creature, how large his insistence and how great the affection.

Why Bother?

Slow pitch softball is a sport like none other. By that I mean it’s not really a sport. Not the way I play it, anyway. I stand out in right field, glove at the ready, with the mantra in my head: I will field the ball. I will not shame myself. A typical play goes like this: At the crack of the bat I crouch forward, poised for action. I am relieved when the ball tings off the aluminum bat and rockets straight for the 3rd baseman, who scoops it into her mitt easily, then in one fluid motion raises her arm up, hand behind her head and sling shots the ball across the infield hitting the bull’s eye of the 1st baseman’s glove with a confident thwack, long before the doomed runner even gets close. I am relieved because this is something I cannot do, the scooping, the slinging and definitely not the confident thwack. When I throw the ball it either bounces off the ground hard before making it to the target or lofts up gently creating hardly any sound at all as my teammate easily catches it. That is, she catches it if she doesn’t get bored waiting for the throw to reach her and lose focus.

When at bat I modify my mantra only slightly: I will hit the ball. I will not shame myself. The good thing is that most of the time it works. I’m a solid base hitter, if only because the pitch is often not the only thing that is slow in slow pitch softball. More often than not I hit the ball into the zone between the infield and outfield and then just run like hell. If I’m lucky the outfield is populated by those too slow and unskilled to play the infield and even though I feel like one of those cartoon characters with legs spinning round, trying but failing to gain traction (I can almost hear the sound effects), I make it to 1st base. It used to bother me that no one shouts ‘Heavy hitter!’ or ‘Look alive outfield!’ when I step up to the plate, but I’ve lowered my standards. Now I’m just pleased if I don’t have to pretend that I meant to bunt.

So, the logical question is, why bother? I mean, it certainly isn’t for exercise since most of the running I do is between the bench and right field. I’d like to say it’s to have fun, and I do have fun shouting for my teammates, but that’s not it. I suppose I do it do it because at any moment in the game I could completely screw up, but in general I don’t. The potential for error in front of a crowd makes my heart beat a little faster, makes me focus on that moment and no other. In my daily life I’m too comfortable and life, the way I see it, is all about taking risks. It might seem small, the playing of a game, but nothing makes me feel alive like the possibility of shame.

Startled Awake

A few times I have been waiting at a light, completely immersed in the minutiae of my thoughts, in the rabbit warren of mental static, churning, falling into that place of, what is it?--that cognitive grind? A few times I have waited at a light and a flying creature is what startled me out of my head. A highway hawk on a sign, a kestrel twitching its tail from a telephone line, a turkey vulture riding an air current, an eagle's white head bright against the green of a tree.

Or maybe I wasn't stopped but driving the time a hawk nearly flew into the windshield of the car in front of me. The driver's body suddenly erect, alert, awake from whatever waking slumber he was in.

And then there are the crows that fly along with you, at the same speed as your car, coasting along as if it were easy, just hardly something worth noticing really, but they want you to see them, to witness the grace and humor and wonder of going forward like you, but above you. Air an afterthought. What could be simpler but feather + wing + flight?




Dickinson wrote: "I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven." That spark in the heart seeing a creature so different from yourself--unbound, spontaneous but programmed to sing or croak or shree--that it transmogrifies you each time you realize this, a shift in your whole thought pattern, if only for a minute, an entrance to the other, the whiff of the present tense, again and again and again. Even the house sparrows give reason for joy--how could they not, even in their common plumage? For it is not a small thing to gather air, and rise.

Dear Fine Blog Reader

We, the management, would like to apologize for the delay. We appreciate your business.

In these few past minutes, it's raining, thundering actually. My little terrier is panicked, even on her Prozac. She prefers the Xanax, the zapper of anxiety. Well, who wouldn't? I mean, the small white pill evaporates the chatter in her nerves. Poor boo.

We are listening to Sigur Ros as it thunders. The bird is in bed. Maybe he wakes when the rumbling starts, but he doesn't peep from his room. Maybe his pupils dilate. When he gets scared during the day, he sits up straight, his feathers flat to his body, his torso and head still, as if he's listening for the turn of the planet. Then, at a cue known just to him, he relaxes, slouches a little, hunches his shoulders like he's ready to slack off. Or maybe fly over to his box in a bag and shred some magazines.

All in all, he's really just a small alien to me. A little green man. Jonesy's figured out the code, the mishmash of language he speaks. Me? I'm the mama who's a tad bit distracted, trying to type as the bird regurgitates on my pinkie. He scuttles across my keyboard, silencing the speakers or closing files or diminishing frames with his quick pace. His warm, scaled eight toes, briefly on my hand--a hey, a message from the avian to the human to say hello back. He means it, or he'll go on next to eat the computer cord or the mail. Then who's in charge, eh?