A Bird Tale In Three Acts
Act I: Careful What You Wish For
This story begins in early February 2020. I had long regretted having our pet parakeet, Birdie. Her proper name was Valentine Bertha Kate McCormack, Birdie for short.
The poor bird lived a solitary life (oddly appropriate, given what happened during the spring of 2020). She lived in our laundry room, mostly forgotten. We went out of town once and Birdie had busted out. When we returned, we found her in our tub, faint and famished. The dumb bird did it to herself. Another time she did the same exact thing, but somehow got lost under our bed. Another time, she flew onto the top of the refrigerator, and when Jen went to help her back to the cage, she fled afoot and fell behind the refrigerator. She was marooned there until I got back from a work trip.
Well, as 2019 drew to a close, I would "innocently" and "benevolently" bring the ol' girl out to the deck and "accidentally" leave the cage door open. "Daddy! Birdie was outside but her cage door was open! Thank goodness she didn't fly away!" my oldest would exclaim. I heard that countless times until one fateful day in early 2020 Jen came in and whispered, "Birdie's not in her cage." Success. The kids didn't notice for two weeks.
When they did, they cried.
Act II: Deja Vu Aflutter Again
Fast forward to March 23, 2020. We spent a good bit of the afternoon and evening that day outside, awestruck by the beauty around us. I spotted a spiny (and probably stingy) caterpillar. Jen and the kids found a super tiny monarch caterpillar. The elephant ears were blooming. Pace the caterpillar's chrysalis was looking great. Then I got a text from Jen: "Come see this."
I walked out the back door and there in our pecan tree was a cockatiel. Gray body with bright orange cheeks. We whistled, Ana screeched at it, Jules waved a broom. Finally, the little lost cockatiel (which Ana named Pica) made its way to a near enough branch that we reached out a stick and it climbed aboard. The poor thing was crazy hungry and immediately began devouring a seed stick left over from the Birdie days. Maybe Pica is thirsty, we said. I volunteered to go get some water, so I picked up the birdcage that had been brought outside. Disaster struck. The bottom of the cage fell off and landed on the bench with a metallic crash. Pica, spooked, flew off. Ana burst into tears.
Daddy did it again. I orchestrated the flight of another pet bird. I went back to grilling hamburgers.
Act III: Jennifer, the Bird Whisperer
At that point, I thought the story was over and I'd have a good story about irony, where I had the bird that I couldn't get rid of then lost the bird that everyone wanted to catch. But Jen would not be so easily denied.
She went two houses down and actually trespassed into the backyard of the empty house. There was Pica, high up in a palm tree. Then she flew westward again. This time, Jen and the kids found her on a side street. By some miracle, they coaxed her down to the seed stick again. Relieved and exuberant, they called me to bring the cage, I walked down the street and undertook the task of putting Pica in the cage. That bird took one look at me, somehow knew the type of bird loser I am, and flew off. I’d done it again! Fortunately, Ana was around the corner and didn't see. By this point, I was done. I left Jen in charge.
Five minutes passed. Then 10 minutes. Then in walked Jennifer through the front door, birdcage in her hand, and in the cage the cockatiel. How in the world did she do that?
That night, I slept in the tent in the backyard with the kids, and on the deck in the birdcage was the cockatiel.
And no, I didn’t slip out in the middle of the night to open the birdcage.
