The Complete Collection. William Wharton

fighting it. Without fear we wouldn’t be successful animals. Fear’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just like play or pain it’s natural and necessary. I’ve got to live with this.

      In the dream, all four of Perta’s eggs hatch. There are three darks and one yellow. Perta says the yellow one is female and the darks male. I still can’t tell; I’ll probably never make it as a bird. In the daytime, up in the tree, Perta’s eggs hatch; so she wasn’t sterile after all. It makes me feel better about my Perta.

      The birds in the breeding cages are going at it like mad. There are eight nests of five. As they’re ready to leave the breeding cages, I’ll put them all in the female cage so the male flight cage can be kept for the fliers. The fliers have begun to fill their cage with young ones too. The nests are built with materials they’ve scavenged from outside. They’re in and out of the aviary all day like pigeons. I leave the wire gate open for them. The opening’s too small and the landing platform too high and too narrow for a cat to get in.

      I’m not sure what I’ll do when their babies begin to fly around the flight cage. The problem is whether to leave the outside entrance open or not. These young birds won’t have been trained to come to me when I whistle or to come back to the aviary at all. Would the parents teach them? Would they realize that the only food for them is in the cage? I decide to take the chance and leave the cage open. As long as they’re being fed by the parents, they’ll come back to the cage. That way they’ll get the habit. When they’ve started cracking seed for themselves will be the time when I’ll know if it’s all possible. Can they be free and still be part of the aviary community?

      In my dream, life is really a dream. I fly and sing and help feed the babies. Then when they come out of the nest, I teach them to fly. Teaching them to fly in the open air is almost as much fun as flying itself. Teaching flying is always the best part of flight dreams. Perta is happy and is already sitting on a new nest of babies. They’re a week old. I fly with the first nest to all my favorite places. Some of my children from last year fly with us, especially the males who aren’t tied down to the nest. These birds are something between brothers and uncles to the new ones, and help with the teaching. Being a father and grandfather at the same time is a tremendous experience. I feel like a brother to my own children. It’s too bad people are so old when they get to be grandparents.

      The other female who built outside the cage in the daytime hatches her birds, too. I think there are three of them. I can’t see the nest where Perta has built very well because it’s so high. I wouldn’t know her birds are hatched except I hear them peeping to be fed. In my dream, there is no other bird besides Perta and myself who builds outside the cage.

      The way my canaries have adapted to natural life is almost proof that a canary keeps many of its natural skills even after centuries of being in cages and generations of interbreeding with other types of birds. I feel that if my canaries could find proper food, they would probably survive alone, without me.

      The birds from the nest built in the tree over the roof are just getting up onto the edge of the nest and tottering when one day I notice a beat-up tomcat sitting on the porch roof and staring up at them. I’m not sure he can jump from the porch roof to the roof of the house, but I throw some stones at him till he goes away. It’ll really be dangerous when those young ones are starting to fly and flutter to the ground. I can’t think of any way to keep that cat out of the yard.

      The female flight cage has sixty-two young birds in it already and the new nests are filling. It looks like even more birds than the year before, and that’s not counting the babies of my fliers. The feed bills are enormous, but I have enough money. I just tell my father how much I need and he gives it to me.

      Those babies of the fliers are flying in and out of the aviary on their own. There doesn’t seem to be any trouble. They all come into the aviary to eat and roost at night. The mothers are generally onto second nests but the males fly with the young. Some of the young males have already started with their burbling, warbling songs. The father males still come when I whistle but the young don’t pay any attention to me at all. It’s marvelous that they’re so free; practically no strings tying them to the cage. Most of the females don’t go out much because they’re busy with the nests. I can still whistle down the one female who built her nest in the tree over the house. She’ll come for a brief minute and eat from my finger, but then fly back to her nest. It’s good to see how conscientious the birds are with their babies.

      The young ones are very much like wild birds. They’ve never known what it is to be closed in a cage. They fly farther from the yard than the others; they also tend to flock more than the parent birds. The parents don’t seem to have any instinct for flocking left, whereas these young ones flock almost like pigeons. They’re much more easily frightened and will spook up in a flock to the tops of the trees.

      All the birds have started eating the food I leave outside for Perta and the other young female. I decide to move that food inside. The only power I have left to bring them into the cages at night now is the food. After my evening feeding of the breeding cages I drop the wires of the outside door so when the birds come in to eat they can’t go out again. This way I can keep some count of them. As far as I can tell, there are already about twenty flier babies. The rate of reproduction is nothing like those in the breeding cages. There are more losses all along. For one thing, I don’t take out the eggs as they’re hatched. This means none of the nests have more than three or four birds.

      I don’t like it when the young fliers treat me as any other enemy. They’re almost like my own grandchildren, but they don’t recognize me. My dream is built on them but they are completely separate from it; they’re practically wild birds.

      – I probably built myself mostly to ‘beat’ my father; not just ‘beat him up’, but to be better at being what I thought he was. So, I became like him. We become like the people with whom we compete. It’s like cannibals eating part of an enemy warrior to absorb his courage. Crazy stuff!

      Then it happens. I’ve just come out to the morning feeding when I look up at the nest in the tree over the house. There’s that cat on the roof and he has one of the young birds in his mouth. He’s reaching out to knock down another of the young birds roosting on a branch just below the nest. The mother bird is frantic. She’s flying at the cat and the cat swings at her. I don’t see the other young one.

      I pick up stones and start throwing them. I yell, but he ducks and keeps pawing at the branch, or, when the mother bird comes near enough, bats at her.

      I whistle for the mother to come to me and she flies down to my finger but jumps away again before I can catch her. She flies back up to the tree. I run into the garage and get out the ladder. My father comes out. He helps me put the ladder so I can climb onto the porch roof. My mother comes out. She’s worried I’ll fall and that my father will be late for work.

      I climb up onto the roof. The cat is holding his ground but backs off a little when I stand and start reaching out for him. Now I’m up there, the mother bird is even braver in her attack on the cat. He still holds the body of the young bird in his mouth. The young one he’s been trying to reach has backed up the branch toward the nest where the other baby is looking over the side.

      I’m just scrambling onto the roof when the cat knocks down the mother bird with a swing of one paw. I jump to get there ahead of the cat but he gets her first. He drops the young bird and grabs her with his teeth before I can do anything. I catch hold of the cat by the front leg. He scratches at me while I shift my hold and get him around the neck. I pry open his mouth to get out the mother bird. It’s too late. She’s dead. I pick up the little dead baby bird. I’ve let go of the cat and it slinks back across the roof, then drops to the porch roof. My father is standing with a stick by the rain barrel. The cat leaps off the roof and past him. He swings at it with the stick but doesn’t hit it.

      I climb down and inspect the two birds. Both their spines are broken at the neck. A cat knows what it’s doing when it comes to killing a bird.

      Before we take down the ladder, I go up and get the two baby birds out of the nest. It isn’t hard to catch them, they can’t fly. I take them into the fliers’ cage with the other young ones.