The WWII Collection. William Wharton

the melody, but also the sounds of the instruments and their blends too. It’s the way Alfonso’s music is in my head.

      I start training the baby birds not to be afraid of me. I go into the aviary with treat food or dandelion greens or apple, things they like. I put these on my knee or on the toe of my shoe and sit down to wait. Birdie comes down, usually, to say hello and eat. The little ones are shy at first but gradually come over and start to eat cautiously. I get the dark one and the spotted one to sit on my finger after a week. Even Alfonso eats off my shoe and once off my knee. He sure is a suspicious bird.

      Birdie doesn’t like me to pick her up anymore. She gets nervous and jumps away when I put my hand over her. It probably has to do with nesting. Her responsibility as a mother bird is too much for her to take those kinds of chances.

      The Alfonso meanness seems directly tied to the dark color. The dark baby is already pushing his nest mates around. The only one who gives him any fight is the spotted one. The little yellow babies just good-naturedly move away or wait their turn.

      One time, the dark one forgets himself and tries to push Alfonso off the perch. Alfonso flies away the first time. The little dark one follows him. When Alfonso realizes what’s going on, he rears up and gives that baby one sharp rap on the skull. The poor thing plummets to the floor of the aviary and walks around in circles, stunned. Alfonso goes about his business, without following up, and that’s the end of it.

      The new babies are born all in one morning. There’re four of them. They all look dark, no pure yellow ones. Birdie and Alfonso start their routine. They seem to have made a rule that the babies of the first nest aren’t allowed in the breeding cage. Alfonso enforces this. It doesn’t take many bops on the head or Alfonso growls for the young ones to get the idea.

      I’ve taken out the old nest holder and removed the nest. I’ve also cleaned up that corner of the cage where it was caked with crap. The new babies grow fast. In almost no time they’re teetering on the edge of the nest. I’ve given up trying to guess sex. There are two completely dark like Alfonso and two with light breasts and dark wings. One of these has a dark head, too. The other has a spot over the left eye. They’re almost three weeks old when it happens.

      One of the spotted ones, the one with the dark head, has already fallen out of the nest several times. I’ve put it back every night before I turn off the light. One morning, I go in and find this one has fallen out during the night. I pick it up and it’s stiff, legs straight out, and ice cold. I hold it in my hands hoping the warmth might revive it, but it doesn’t move. I put it in warm water. I hold it in the water with the head out, but there’s nothing to do. The poor thing froze in the night; it’s dead. I’m sorry for Birdie and Alfonso. I watch but they keep on feeding the other birds and don’t seem to notice one is missing. I don’t know what I expect them to do. Birds can’t cry. I guess the only animals that can cry, laugh, and lie are people. We’re probably the only ones who have some idea about being dead, too. Most animals try to keep from being dead but I don’t think they make much of it.

      There’s something I want to know about birds that I haven’t been able to find anywhere; the density, how much it weighs in relation to its volume. I can figure it out with this dead young one. I didn’t want to try it with a live bird.

      First I fill a glass of water to the very top, put the glass in a saucer and put the dead bird into the glass. I push the bird until all of it is under. The excess water flows up over the side and is caught by the saucer. I pour that water into a jar to take to school to measure it accurately. I wrap the bird in a piece of cloth and put both the jar and the bird in my lunch bag.

      My homeroom is in the science lab and there’s all the equipment I need to measure and weigh. I weigh the bird and divide the weight by the volume of the displaced water. I’m amazed at how light a bird is.

      The next day I do somewhat the same thing on myself. I half fill the bathtub, mark how high the water is, then climb in, get completely underwater, and mark how high the water rises. I measure this rise and all the dimensions of the tub. With this I figure my volume. I weigh myself accurately and do the dividing. I’m one hell of a lot denser than a bird. That’s something I have to get around somehow.

      That night I put the baby bird in a bottle of alcohol I snitched from school, and hide it with the sterile egg under my socks. Later I want to cut the bird open and look at the bones. I read that the bones are hollow and I want to see what they’re like. There are also supposed to be air sacs in a bird, like in a fish. I want to see if I can find them, too. I can’t do it yet, I couldn’t get myself to face Birdie if I did.

      The other birds get out of the nest without any trouble and go through the same business of learning to fly. I watch them by the hour. I sit outside the aviary mostly and watch through the binoculars. I have the binoculars tied to the back of a chair and I kneel down to keep my back from breaking. I must look like a very religious character praying all day long.

      With the binoculars I can concentrate on one bird and watch it. I’m trying to find out what it’s thinking. I can get the feeling I’m a bird after a while. After two or three hours like that, when I look around my room and at myself and it all looks strange. Everything’s huge, exaggerated, and falling over. It takes me several minutes to come back inside myself.

      The babies are easy to watch because they don’t fly around so fast. I’m still trying to see the difference between the way they flap their wings when they fly and when they’re being fed. For one thing, when they’re being fed, they squat, pushing against the floor and curving their backs in. The wings flap without any pull from the breast muscles. When they try to fly, it’s the opposite. They hunch forward with their shoulders thrust ahead and give a quick powerful push down and back. It’s as if they’re pulling themselves up a wall. I practice running around the yard doing this.

      It helps considerably in jumping up to the perch. Now, I can do it without falling. I can jump up, turn around in midair, and come down facing the other way. I can also get into a squatting position on the perch with my arms held down at my sides like wings. Squatting, I get the feeling of being a bird.

      I practice out in the yard doing these things for about an hour every night and I flap a half hour in the morning and another half hour before I go to bed at night. I close my eyes when I flap and try to imagine I’m flying. I’m trying to get the rhythm of it across my shoulders. If I can just loosen the scapula and open up the accrumen process at the shoulder some and then develop the trapezius, deltoid, and triceps muscles, I could build up a lot of flapping power. I practice jumping with each flap so I’ll get a smooth movement.

      In my room, I take off my shoes and double up the carpet so my mother won’t hear me. She’s already asking questions about my perch exercises but I tell her it’s something we do in gym class at school. I have the feeling she’s looking for something. I’ll have to figure some way to get her to go along with the idea of the birds.

      As soon as the second bunch is out of the nest, Birdie is off and building her third. I put back the strainer from the first nest and more burlap. Alfonso has to dash around protecting all the birds from her feather-snitching. The first bunch is fast enough now so they can get away, but the little ones are easy victims. I wonder how many feathers she’d really pull out if Alfonso didn’t fly to the rescue. I hate to think she’d strip them bare. It seems so crazy.

      As soon as this nest is finished, she starts laying eggs. She lays five, again. The entire cycle is started. It’s May now and she’ll just finish her third nest before the hot summer comes on.

      The second nest has worked their way out into the big aviary. They still like to be fed and they chase their older brothers and sisters around. These fly away, except for one I’m calling Alfonso II, that’s the dark bird. He usually gives them a quick clout on the head or neck.

      Alfonso I is being run to death by the babies. He flies up to hide on the top perch whenever he can. Gradually they all learn to eat egg food, and some of them even start experimenting with seeds. The first nest is onto the system of cracking seed and spend all their time chasing each other or practicing singing. They make quite a racket when they get started.

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