Birdy

  All the free flying, so far, has depended on me, Birdy, the boy. I’m the one who takes the birds out on my finger to fly. However, in my dream, it’s impossible to contact myself as boy. I can see myself, but I can’t get my attention and so I don’t exist. Therefore, there’s no way for me to be whistled to or be taken out. In my dream there’s no other way to get out of the aviary. I can’t just wish myself out; it isn’t enough.

  I work out a new idea. I design a pigeon-type outside door entry to the cage. I do this with thin wires hanging freely from the top of an outside opening, overlapping the inside of the cage. I build a landing board just outside the opening. This way a bird can land on the board outside and go into the aviary by pushing aside the wires. He then can’t go outside again because the dangling wires will have fallen back into place. The question is, can I train my birds to use this kind of an entrance?

  When I get it finished I take the birds out of the aviary the same as usual, throwing them up to fly. When I want them back in the aviary, I stick my hand through their cage and out the opening so it rests on the landing board. I whistle. One at a time the birds come and land on my finger. I pull them through the door into the cage. When they’re inside I give them treat food. I do this several times.

  Next, instead of taking them out the usual door and carrying them on my fingers, I pull back the dangling wires so the opening is free, then stand outside the aviary where they can see me, put my finger on the landing board, and whistle. They quickly learn to fly out the door onto my finger. As they come out I give each of them a toss into the air. We practice this several times until it’s automatic. After that I can stand outside the door, whistle, and they come out. It isn’t long before they come out when I pull aside the wires on the door. They can now go outside of the cage to fly on their own whenever I make it possible by clearing the opening.

  I regularly reinforce their coming to me with the whistle and then throwing them up again. I try changing the whistle for each bird, so I’ll have a way to call in a particular bird, but they’re spoiled with the one whistle. You can’t ask too much of a canary. Once, I cut one of the dead birds open in biology class and saw how little the brain is; in fact, the eyes of a canary weigh more than its brain. I can’t ask them to learn too many complicated things.

  It takes a long time for the birds to get used to flying into the aviary on their own. First, I put treat food inside the door and whistle them in. I also put them on the landing board, but they don’t want to push aside the wires. I think canaries are more sensitive to touch than pigeons. I begin leaving the wires pulled back and then they go in for the treat food. Finally, one at a time, they get the courage to push aside the wires to go in on their own. It’s done. They can practically live the life of a free-flying pigeon. They’ve become amazingly quick and agile fliers so that, even after three hundred generations living in cages, I’m not much worried about cats or hawks.

  In my dream one night, I look up and see the opening; the wires are pulled back. I fly onto the edge of the opening and hop out onto the landing platform. The dream of my dream is coming true. I’m going to fly free.

  I fly up onto the top of the aviary. I hop along the roof edge, look down at the ground, then across the yard to the roof of our house. It’s a beautiful day, the spring leaves are open, there are huge, soft, white clouds drifting in the sky. I spring. I loopswing through the air, feeling the fullness of the wind in the pits of my wings. I look down and the yard gets smaller. I circle once, then land on the rain gutter. The world is bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger because I can see farther, and smaller because I’m looking down on it and know it’s mine, more than ever before.

  I fly from the roof almost straight up; straight as I can, not flying to anywhere, just feeling the sky. Then, I fold my wings and let myself drop until my feathers begin to flutter in the wind. I open my wings, catch myself, and fly straight up again, stalling, looping a long lingering loop. I look down.

  Below is my yard, all in one piece. I can see all of it without turning my head. I can see the whole baseball field and out along Church Lane to the cemetery. I’m directly over the tree in the corner of our yard. I come down in slow circles looking for a branch on which to land. I find one just on the yard side of the top of the tree. I land and fluff out my feathers. I feel all together. I feel like me to the very tips of myself.

  I look over to the aviary. Perta is coming out, standing on the landing board. On top of the aviary are two of my sons and one of my daughters. I think of peeping to tell them where I am but decide to sing. I start to sing in the sunshine and my song goes out into the blue air. I have a sense of drifting into the sky with my notes. I feel I’m a part of everything my song touches. While I’m singing, Perta flies up, and joins me on the branch. She feels what I’m feeling and asks me to feed her. I feed her and sing some more, then feed her again. I fly up over her and in. It’s more than it ever was before. I spring away and fly small circles over Perta. I sing while I’m flying. I’m forgetting I’m Birdy; I’m a real bird and it isn’t a dream.

  I fly all through the night and can go everywhere my birds have gone in the day. There are other places I want to fly to, like over the gas tank or to the mill pond, or down where we used to have the pigeon coop in the tree, but I can’t do it.

  In the days, I think about flying all the time. It’s all so real in the dream that the things I do in the day are harder and harder to believe.

  It’s time to start breeding for the new year. I clean out all the cages and get them in shape. I’ve already decided who the breeding pairs will be and I’ve been giving them egg food and dandelion to get them in breeding condition. When I put the breeding birds in the cage, I’ll take out the dividing floor and use the whole flight cage for my family.

  Early in April, I put the breeding pairs together. In the dream that night, Perta and I fly to the edges of the places we can go. We chase each other in the air and sometimes brush wings as we come close. I’m tempted to turn over in the air like a tumbler pigeon, but a canary can’t do that.

  Perta says she doesn’t want to build our nest in the aviary; she wants to build it in the tree. It’s my dream so I thought this up, but I’m surprised in the dream. If Perta builds her nest in the tree in the dream, will it be there in the daytime, too?

  The next day I’m busy feeding and watering the birds in the breeding cages and watching to see how the mating is proceeding. More than half the pairs have mated before, so they should get started quickly enough.

  I’ve already opened the door to my flying family and they’re out flying in the open. After I’m finished with the breeding cages, and before I go in for dinner, I whistle for them to come back into the cage. Everybody comes in but Perta. I’d trained her later than the others so I whistle again. She comes to the landing board and when I put out my finger she comes onto it. She has something in her mouth; it’s a piece of dry grass.

  That night, Perta and I search all over the tree for a right meeting of branches where we can build our nest. I think about climbing the tree in the day and putting a nest holder up there for us, but decide against it.

  The next afternoon, Perta doesn’t come when I call. I know she’s building a nest outside somewhere. This is another thing that began in the dream and now is happening in the day. I put some seed and water on the roof of the aviary where she’ll be safe from cats, and hope for the best.

  Perta and I spend many hours building the nest. It’s much harder without a container and without shredded burlap. We gather pieces of dried grass and bits of wood from every direction. There’s an old straw chair in the garage my father made years ago, before I was born. We tear out pieces and shred it to line the nest. It’s a beautiful construction. I can only do what Perta tells me and her instincts are coming on strong. We get it finished two days before the first egg comes.

  It’s a terrific nest. I fly to different branches so I can look down on it. The place we chose can’t be seen f
rom the air, or from the ground either. No hawk or cat would ever even know it’s there. Perta lays her usual four eggs and she’s very happy. I sing to her from different parts of the tree and go down to the seed and water on top of the aviary to get food for her.

  In the daytime I find immediately where Perta has built her nest. It’s exactly where we’ve built our nest in the dream. Perta could have fertile eggs this time, fertilized by one of the young from her last year’s nest. I hope Perta’s eggs will be fertile. Some of the other fliers are beginning to build nests, too. Most of them, like pigeons, are building in the security of the flight cage. One, like Perta, is building outside. It’s the little yellow one, the one I first took out. She’s building in the tree overhanging the roof of our house. Because of cats, this worries me. I don’t know whether I should try to move the nest or not. I decide to leave it alone and hope for the best.

  – I’ve got to learn to live with myself the way I am. The trouble is there are whole parts of me I don’t know. All my life, I’ve been building a personal picture of myself like body building in Strength and Health. Only I didn’t build from the inside, I built from the outside, to protect myself against things.

  Now, a big part of this crazy structure is torn apart. I have to start all over, looking inside to find what’s really there. I don’t know if I can do it. I’ll probably wind up putting together the old Al with some pieces missing and plaster it over somehow.

  I’ve got to learn how to live with fear. It’s built in and there’s no sense 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. Maybe one of the males will adopt them. I stuff them with food before I go to school and hope for the best.