Birdy. William Wharton

and watch Birdie. First, I change the feed and water; then, if she tries to take a bath in the new water, and she usually does, I give her some water in a saucer. After that, after I’ve watched her bathe and talked to her, I give her some treat food on the end of the perch. She isn’t afraid of me at all now. That is, not for a bird.

      The only thing a bird has going for it is that it can fly away. If Birdie knows that living in a cage makes her so vulnerable, it must be terrible. Still, she always keeps herself ready to escape even though there’s no place to go. I try to think what it would be like to have some gigantic bird come and stick his claws into the window of my room with some potato chips or a hoagie. What would I do? Would I go over and get some, even if I had enough regular food in a dish somewhere else?

      After the first few days, when I come into the room, Birdie is down on the floor of the cage, running back and forth, looking out over the barrier that holds in the gravel. I think she’s glad to see me, not just because I give her treat food, but because she’s lonely. I’m her one friend now, the only living being she gets to see.

      By the end of the week, I rubber-band the treat food dish onto the end of an extra perch and put it into the cage through the door. I lock the door open with a paper clip. At first, Birdie’s shy, but then she jumps onto the perch I’m holding and side-hops over to the treat dish. It’s terrific to see her without the bars between us. She sits eating the treat food at the opening to the door and looking at me. How does she know to look into my eyes and not at the huge finger next to her?

      After she’s finished eating, she retreats to the middle of the perch. I lift it gently to give her a ride and a feeling the perch is part of me and not the cage. She shifts her body and flips her wings to keep balance, then looks at me and makes a new sound, like peeEP; very sharp. She jumps off the perch to the bottom of the cage. I take out the perch and try to talk to her but she ignores me. She drinks some water. She doesn’t look at me again till she’s wiped off her beak and stretched both wings, one at a time. She uses her feet to help stretch the wings. Then, she gives a small queeEEP?

      Generally, Birdie looks at me more with her right eye than her left. It doesn’t matter which side of the cage I stand. She turns so she can see me with her right eye. Also, when she reaches with her foot to hold the treat dish, or even her regular food dish, she does it with her right foot. She’d be right-handed if she had hands; she’s right-footed or right-sided. She approaches and does most things from the right side. Even when she’s stretching her wings, she always stretches her right wing first. The only exception is she sleeps on her left foot. I think when a bird sleeps you get a good idea of what birds think of the ground. A bird will usually search out the highest place it can find to sleep and then separate itself as best it can from the ground by standing on one foot; in Birdie’s case, her lesser foot. A bird, balled up in puffed-out feathers, standing on one foot, looks nothing like flying. A lizard looks more capable of flying than a sleeping bird.

      Because of the way Birdie sleeps, I want to build my bed up against the ceiling of my room. My mother gets all hot and bothered, but my father says it’ll be all right if I pay for the wood myself and don’t knock holes in the walls or floor. We only rent the house.

      I pinch wood from the lumberyard at night. I do it the same way Al and I got the wood for the pigeon coop. I sneak in at night and push it out under the fence in back, then go around and get it. I buy bolts and use my father’s tools. Because I can’t attach to walls or ceiling, it has to be self-supporting. The job takes me two weeks. When it’s finished, I fit the mattress and springs into the frame up high. I put the old bedstead out in the garage. I check my pigeon suit and look around for the baseballs.

      I build a ladder up to the bed by drilling holes and pegging in steps. It’s like a ship’s ladder when I finish. I even run electricity up there and hang curtain rods from the ceiling. I snitch some material from Sears and make curtains. It’s a great little nest, even better than the loft in the tree. I can crawl up there, pull the curtains and turn on the light. A private place.

      By now, Birdie jumps right on the stick when I put it in her cage; even without treat food. She’ll eat the treat food off my finger, too. I wet my finger, push it into the feed bag and some sticks on. I hold my finger at the same place on the perch where I usually put the treat dish and she comes over to pick it off. Her little beak moves fast and is sure and gentle. She cleans it all, down to the little bits caught in my fingernails.

      Next day, when Birdie jumps on my perch, I pull it slowly out of the cage. I’ve practiced a lot with moving the perch up and down or back and forth inside the cage so she knows how to stay on and not be scared. As I pull her out through the door, she looks up at the top of the door passing over her head and hops backward to stay in the cage. When she comes to the end of the perch, she hops off into the cage. I begin all over, but it’s the same. After three or four times, I get the idea to put some treat food on my finger so she’ll be eating as I pull her through the door.

      This works and when Birdie looks up she’s out of the cage. She gives me a strong qurEEP? when she sees where she is. I hold the perch as steadily as I can and she stands there looking at me. Then she unfocuses and lets the room come to her. It must feel to her like going on a rocket ship and getting out of the earth’s atmosphere.

      I hold her there a minute, then slowly lower the perch back to the cage. As I push it through the door, she jumps off the perch and down to the floor. She goes over and eats one seed, then hops to the other side and takes a drink. It looks as if she’s checking to see if her world’s the same as when she left it. She queeps back and forth with me for about half an hour after that. She’s as excited as I am. It’s wonderful to have her free right there in front of me, to know she can flip her wings and fly out into the room. It makes everything different, it makes my room seem as big as the sky.

      I’m getting better at queeping. You have to do it with your throat, tight, deep, and use your lips. It can’t be done by whistling.

      The next day I take Birdie out of the cage again. This time she only ducks under the crosspiece at the door. I put some treat food on my finger and she hops over to eat it. She touches me for the first time when she puts her foot onto my finger while she eats. I keep her out on the perch for almost five minutes and give her some rides by slowly moving the perch up and down or back and forth. She queeps at me each time and watches my eyes.

      I take her over to the cage and instead of putting her in the door, I lean the perch on top of the cage and she hops off. Then, I put the perch just into the opening of the door. After a few queeps and some peEEPs, she jumps onto the perch and into the cage. It’s really a shame to close the door after that.

      She knows she’s been smart and brave. She goes over to the perch where I feed her treat food and gives a couple good loud QREEP?s. She actually is saying something new like QREEP-A-REEP?. I put some grains onto my finger and she eats them.

      In a few weeks, I have Birdie so she’ll fly out of the cage when I open the door and then she’ll land on the perch when I hold it up to her. She’ll fly off the perch to the other parts of the room, up on my bed, or on the window sill or on the dresser. Then she’ll fly back to my perch. She flies so beautifully with her head out and her feet tucked back. Her wings in the room make a whispering sound. If I want her, all I do is hold out the perch and call her with PeepQuEEP. This is a sound she knows. Probably it’s more her name than Birdie. ‘Birdie’ doesn’t mean anything to her when I say it. I keep thinking of her to myself as Birdie but PeepQuEEP is the name I call her with.

      At first, I give her a little grain or two of treat food when she comes to me, but after a while I don’t. I know and she knows we’re playing together.

      Sometimes she teases by flying back toward the perch and then, at the last minute, swerving away and landing somewhere else. One time she lands on my head this way. I can watch her fly all day, and I even like to watch her hopping around. She searches all over the floor and finds little things I can’t even see. I watch her carefully to get any droppings. If my mother finds any bird shit on anything, the whole game is finished.

      It’s a long time before Birdie lets me stroke her head or her breast. Birds are that way; they don’t even stroke each other. Birdie