Feeding the Flocks

Out of what could only have been misguided goodness, someone once gave us a pair of cockatiels, beautiful and elegant white birds with a singular gift for setting off the alarm and imitating wolf whistles. Each week, we cleaned the cage, laid clean newspaper and filled the little dishes with fresh seed which they would then commence to spit in all directions with alarming velocity and pinpoint accuracy. They shrieked and fluttered and chattered endlessly, making a constant mess and noise, driving the cats to distraction and the dogs to emotional thin ice. In the summer, we moved them to the screen porch where they could torment the local wildllife with their squawking nonsense - there was no peace of mind to be had during this time, no stillness or serenity to be found. They didn't appear to like anyone and barely tolerated each other, ignored the toys we bought, and didn't care for any of the locations we tried, sun or shade, up or down, view or no view. They were malcontents, protesters, bitter complainers with long life spans and far too much vocal agility. Each day I prayed to remove the cage cover and discover their still, lifeless little bodies, gone to a heavenly flock in the sky. And each day they greeted me with a cacaphony of scratchings, ear piercing whistles and the occasional curse word, thoughfully taught to them by a previous owner and delivered with startling clarity. It was an uncivilized and unnerving way to begin a morning.

As a general rule, I'm reasonably neutral about birds. When we were children, my mother always seemed to have a parakeet or some such in a cage somewhere, perky little packages of feathers that cheerfully chirped and twittered and accepted their confinement with minimum fuss. They came in blues and greens and soft pastel yellows and always seemed to be happy little birds, replaceable and hard to tell one from another. In the winters, we would scatter seed in the back yard near the maple tree and my daddy would see to it that there were always several feeders in place for the sparrows and cardinals and even the raucus bluejays and crows. I suspect we fed more squirrels than birds some of the time, but there was always enough to go around. The old orange tomcat would watch all this with fascination and great curiosity but he never made a move toward the flighty little creatures, knowing in his heart that to cause their death would've brought dire consequences, feline nature notwithstanding. He brought no gifts of mangled little bodies, no hunting trophies were laid on the doorstep. Like the birds themselves, he recognized his limitations and abided by them.

There is joy in birds, my daddy would tell me as we threw handfuls of seed onto the fresh snow, joy and the freedom of flight. The birds would gather around us, landing every so lightly on the new powder and leaving skittery little tracks as they pecked and hunted, hunger overcoming apprehension every time. They would land on the bare branches of the maple tree and alight on the cyclone fence, singing songs and throwing the snow off their wings in a dazzle of early morning sunlight and shadows. My daddy would tell me stories about swallows returning to Capistrano, about pigeons that faithfully carried messages during the war, about doves and olive branches, about falcons and hawks and sleepy barn owls in the dark eaves of the hayloft. And when we were done, he would make me hot chocolate and buttered toast and we would watch the birds and squirrels feeding peacefully together under the maple tree.

My daddy would've had patience and compassion for those damned cockatiels.