"Excuse me, Sir? Hi. Sorry to bother you. I was
wondering if I could make a rather odd request?"
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"Sure...what is it?"
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"May I take a picture of your shoe?"
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Wednesday's horoscope:
�It's hard to pay attention when new developments or more exciting projects
catch your eye. An encounter with another
culture will bring the world closer to you while opening up doors of
opportunity.�
�
�
�
Ok, I'm not one to believe in horoscopes, but that
Wednesday morning our plans to each have productive days at work
were somewhat sidetracked. When saamba (her) was leaving to go to
work, she took three steps outside and I heard her let out a small shriek.
�
Oh no, I thought
- not another midget.
�
I went out expecting to see her hugging the midget
gleefully, but instead saw her crouched down on the grass (none too ladylike in
a business suit with a short skirt - she adds) talking to a blue jay a few feet
away. At first, we weren't sure what had happened to him, though he definitely
was unable to fly, and didn't have the energy to get away from us. We guess he flew into one of our windows - either that or one of our indoor cats has been abusing their telekinesis powers. Saamba(her)'s
Dr. Doolittle mode kicked in and she started begging me to find a box we could
put him in so we could care for him. She used the excuse that "there are so many
cats in the neighborhood..." but truthfully, I haven't seen a cat around here
in more than a year - they were all killed by the tigers. �
We immediately got to work, emergency style. I grabbed a small box
we had been saving for no reason and stole the neighbor's newly delivered
newspaper right from their front door while she called the office to say she would be late. It was, after all,
an emergency.
�
Sort of.
�
I crumpled up the newspaper and stuffed it in the box
like we were going to be shipping the bird through the mail, and then set about trying to put said bird in said shipping
container. While he was obviously not well, he did have enough self-preservation
left in him to hop and flail clumsily all over the yard. At one point he
actually took flight long enough to careen straight into a tree he was trying to take refuge
in. We watched with a cringe as he landed back down on the ground with a *thud*,
but we were then able to scoop him up and bring him inside.
�
At this point I think we had successfully caused the
bird more damage than good, but it's the thought that counts, right? �
As we brought him inside, the bird was squawking up a storm, which confused
the living shit out of our two cats - they knew there was a bird very close nearby,
but didn't seem to agree exactly where. The "polydactyl" cat figured it out soon
enough, but "squeaky-toy" sat staring out the sliding glass doors. She was
convinced that if she could hear a bird, it MUST be outside, despite the fact
that it was four feet behind her on the living room table. Saamba(her)
eventually saw
the way I had packed the bird for shipping, and wisely suggested a much larger
container. She ran into the bedroom to dump all of our
winter clothing out from a large tupperware storage bin and brought it into the
living room, dragging a few unhappy sweaters behind her. This left our bedroom
looking as if the closet had barfed all over the floor. We carefully moved him to the bigger
box and brought him into the computer room, away from the curiosity of our two
slightly idiotic cats. �
Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the bird had
two problems - one of his legs was messed up (he couldn't stand) and one of his
wings seemed out-of-whack. He would basically just fall over if he wasn't
propped up somehow. I was for awhile worried that maybe he was diseased, and
must have washed my hands about 3,000 times that day - wiping everything in the
room with clorox wipes, but I don't think that was the case. He was just busted.
�
The bird seemed calm through all this, though he was
possibly frozen in sheer terror, I'm not sure. Relying on our massive combined
intellect, we realized that we had no idea what to actually do with the bird now
that we had him, and defaulted to our childhood methodology: FEED IT!
�
But what does a Blue Jay eat? Birds eat worms,
right? A Blue Jay is a bird, so it must eat worms. Logic 101. This was
disappointing, because neither of us wanted to deal with worms, so we turned to
the Internet. God I love the Internet. I turns out, that despite a reputation
for eating the eggs of other birds, Blue Jays are mostly vegetarians, and often
eat regular birdseed. This was good because we had just eaten our last bird eggs
the night before.
�
It eventually became clear that I was going to have
to schlep to the store to get birdseed and she grudgingly admitted that she had
run out of excuses why this morning emergency should keep her from going to
work. After spending about a half-hour agonizing over my choice of seed ("...but
this package has a picture of a blue-jay....") I eventually
bought two different brands and returned home. �
By the time I got home, I already had 5 email
messages from my girlfriend asking how "Budgie" was. Since I have not memorized
all of John Lennon's poetry, I didn't know what the hell she was referring to,
but I assumed she meant the bird. Budgie was fine, in fact he now seemed to be
able to stand rather than just lay on his side like an idiot. I inspected him
more closely as the cats madly clawed at the door. �
Not surprisingly, Budgie didn't seem to want to eat
his birdseed or water. I don't know if it was sheer fright, but Budgie let
me pick him up a couple of times for a closer health inspection. This worked
fine until we started to hear the cries of another
blue-jay outside the window demanding to know the whereabouts of Budgie. I
figured it must be his wife, and she was probably really angry because Budgie
freaked out. "Let me go! My wife's gonna whoop my ass if I'm not home in time
for breakfast!" he seemed to be saying. He went into full-blown spaz mode
and I almost dropped him, but then had the idea that I should take advantage of
his mouth being open. I dipped my finger in his water dish and then held it over
his screaming beak until a drop fell down his throat. Suddenly Budgie shut up,�
swallowed a couple of times, blinked and then gave me a very strange look. �
"Did you just put water in my mouth?" �
After that he calmed down for awhile, and I got the
impression he wasn't as scared as he was before, but that was probably wishful
thinking. I fed Budgie some more water this way and got him to eat birdseed too,
but mostly he was eating the birdseed by accident while trying to attack my
fingers. He eventually learned he could bite me, but it didn't seem to be have
an effect on me, and gave up. Anytime he got unruly, I would do the water-drop
down the throat thing, and we would get all amazed and shut up. We had a good
time. He didn't even shit in my hand. �
�
Budgie hung out with me the rest of the day while I
surfed the web reading fun-facts about Blue Jays. I tried to determine his sex,
but he wouldn't let me, so I looked it up on the Internet instead. Apparently,
you just can't tell - males and females are almost exactly alike, so we kept our
conversations non-gender specific. They also mate for life, so he had years of
bitching to look forward to if he survived. Budgie seemed pretty intrigued by my
computer screen, especially when there were pictures of other birds. He also
really liked one of my screensavers, but in a "WTF is THAT!?" kinda way. With an
LCD screen, I was worried that he might try and take flight into a nice picture
of a meadow, and poke a hole in my screen. Luckily, he didn't, because then I
would have had to kill him. �
I think it is funny that I wanted to play with the
bird so much. I know that I should have just let him be and sit in his
little green box and rest, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted to make friends
with him, despite the fact that my attempts to make friends with him will
probably be his lifetime nightmares. If I had children, I would have told them
not to touch the bird....let the bird rest
and don't pick him up....He might have West Nile Virus....He doesn't want to be
touched....He is injured....If you touch him the other birds will smell your
scent and make fun of him and not let him play in their reindeer games....that
sort of thing. �
But I HAD to play with him. �
Anyway, Saamba(her) was stuck at work all day
emailing me for updates because she was jealous that I got to stay home with the
bird and she didn't get to play with him. Ha ha ha! Na na na na na na! So
I told her all about how we were baking cookies and going shopping together. She
contacted a bunch of animal/bird rescue centers in the area, and they were happy
to take Budgie, but they said they would likely have to put the bird down. One
woman insisted that the bird must have been hit by a car, but that wasn't
possible given where we found it - if that had been the case then we would be
caring for an injured driver instead of a bird. And possibly removing a car from
our living room. The rescue centers also said that if they rehabilitated the
bird, they would let it go where they are (40 minutes away). This wasn't
acceptable to us. My girlfriend and I agreed that if we brought the bird to a
rescue center, that we would insist having the option to bring the bird back
here for release, even if they wanted to put it down. �
After all, Budgie did have a loving family here. He
should be given the chance to say goodbye and make it on his own. And besides
that - we didn't want to stop playing with him. �
By 3 p.m. Budgie had made remarkable improvements,
and I was considering letting him go, but I decided to wait and prolong Budgie's
torture until girlfriend returned from the office. Then two people
could terrorize him! That was worth the cost of the birdseed, which by the way,
I had to buy in 5 lb. bags, so we had a little bit left over. By the time she
returned, Budgie seemed very eager to get the hell out. He even demonstrated his
flying ability to us by voluntarily slamming himself into a wall. Three or four
times. �
Birds don't understand walls. �
We scooped him up and brought him outside near some
trees where he might be happy to take refuge. In a moment of pure natural beauty
- with the chorus of a thousand heavenly voices and a bright sunbeam glowing
over him, Budgie flew. �
And he didn't hit anything. �
He landed in a nearby branch, looked back at us, and
said: �
"Fuck off." �
The two of us happily went back inside, proud of our
accomplishment in helping the animal world, and discussed what we wanted for
dinner that night: chicken or duck. �
But I think my horoscope was wrong - no new doors of
opportunity opened for me that day. What a crock.
