Enslaved by Ducks (11 page)

Linda must have recognized my attempted resolve by the quaver in my voice, because no rabbit named Bea or any other orphans directly followed. There were better ways of slipping animals into the house.

O
N OUR THIRD
wedding anniversary, Linda presented me with a large package whose festive, hole-punched wrapping paper concealed a cage.

“Oh, my gosh, another bird!” I said with a big smile on my face.

“It’s a dove,” Linda told me.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” I insisted, my smile still frozen in place. “I mean it, you really shouldn’t have.” But even I wasn’t enough of a curmudgeon to object to a gift that my wife had carefully framed as an expression of love. Howard, for his part, refused to toe the line as a symbol of peace, opting instead to perpetuate interspecies incompatibility.

Most commonly called a ring-neck dove (but also referred to as a barbary dove, collared dove, or turtle dove), Howard was a fawn-colored, mourning dove–size bird with a thin black ring around the back of his neck. An apricot-colored eye with a large black iris gave him a demeanor of perpetual surprise. His straight yellow toothpick of a beak originated just in front of his eye, suggesting an artist’s drunken slip of the hand while painting the upper mandible. Though he was handsome enough while standing still,
the darting of his tiny head while the bulk of his body remained motionless gave Howard the air of a clown. His feet seemed borrowed from another species. In contrast to the velvety surface of his feathers, which often drew our finger pads to his back, Howard’s legs and toes were a scaly earthworm red indented with concentric circles.

The first time we opened the door to his cage, Howard stayed rooted to his perch for several moments, as if he couldn’t believe such magic were possible. With a hop he plopped both feet onto a lower perch, hesitated, turned his body toward the beckoning exit, then jumped onto the open door extending from his cage. A few steps across the bars took him to the door’s edge, where he waited like an Olympic diver mustering concentration for a difficult combination. Finally he flung himself across the dining room, wings flapping heavily as he settled on a chair back facing the parakeets’ cage. A maniac’s laugh,
hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
, erupted from his chest. Bowing rhythmically, he launched into a lusty series of hoots timed to the dipping of his body, raising one foot at the completion of each bow. His chest swelled as he hooted, but his beak remained clamped shut. As we soon learned, this series of hard-wired actions, instigated by the presence of other birds, was a fixed ritual for Howard. Whenever we freed him from his cage, he followed the same routine, from his initial look of disbelief to his concluding strutting-in-place recital.

The parakeets were unimpressed with Howard’s unvarying song and dance, and after a couple of days, I had to throw in with them. Our dove was a bit of a dud in the companionship department. Though he’d contentedly sit on a wooden perch for hours, once out of his cage he refused to wrap his toes around a human finger, cling to a wrist, or rest upon a forearm. He didn’t seem to be so much afraid of contact with us as he was completely disinterested in the concept. While Ollie cocked his head and chattered at the sound
of our voices, and Stanley Sue at least cocked her head, Howard paid no more attention to my “Oh, what a pretty, pretty bird” soliloquies than rabbits Binky or Bertha had ever paid to the shouted command “No!” Howard struck me as a bird particularly ill suited to sharing space with people and their possessions, no more at home in a house than a rooster, and the cramped quarters of the dining room diminished whatever natural grace he possessed. Only when he abandoned those four walls and sailed into the living room to land on the handlebars of our exercise bike did a small hint of the beauty of his long-distance flight unfurl. Truly he belonged in the open sky or, at the very least, in a large aviary packed with palm trees, bromeliads, and docents.

My 1984 edition of
Simon & Schuster’s Guide to Pet Birds
described Howard’s ilk as “friendly birds, even toward small finches and such.” But not, apparently, toward any birds we owned. Our initial fear was that the mischievous parakeets might pick on Howard the same way they got the best of Ollie. Instead, Howard delighted in chasing the three budgies and Chester the canary around our dining room. His flight was clumsy compared to theirs; he was a bomber outmaneuvered by looping stunt planes. But as long as he could scatter the competition and subsequently crow from the top of the refrigerator, he was satisfied with his work.

“I hope he doesn’t hurt the other birds,” I grumbled to Linda, less because I thought he could actually do any harm and more because I hoped to make her feel guilty for inflicting this rabble-rouser on us.

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s harassing the parakeets.”

“No he’s not. Howard’s a romantic. He’s courting them. What do you think the bowing’s all about?”

That made sense. He never hooted at his rival, Ollie. Instead, he’d plop down next to Ollie and make a cudgel of his wing, attempting
to knock him off his cage. For the moment, Howard stayed well clear of Stanley Sue. But his attention toward the budgies did indeed smack of ardor. Rossy, who had her small black eyes set on Ollie, cold-shouldered Howard’s come-ons. Sophie, who hadn’t decided whether or not she cared for Reggie, never considered a liaison with a dove. But Reggie, the spurned blue bon vivant of the parakeet set, had ideas of his own. Once Howard had exhausted his erotic repertoire and settled on the countertop or chair back to survey his uncooperative harem, Reggie swooped in behind him. Landing in the middle of Howard’s back, far removed from the business end, he would chatter excitedly while rubbing his loins against Howard’s wings in a miniature frenzy of delight. Howard basked in the attention. Craning his neck, he’d twist his head backward and with a series of short pecks diddle Reggie’s beak. Once his eyes had cleared of passion, Howard would snap to his senses and abruptly fly off, carrying Reggie on his back for a couple of wing strokes.

“Where’s your camcorder, sweetheart? They’d pay us $10,000 for that,” Linda urged me, referring to a television program that aired painful “home movies” from viewers each week.

“That’s a family show,” I quipped, little realizing that our boy-bird pals could actually make a grown adult blush.

One warm summer day, we received an unexpected visit from Jeanne Trost and her niece, Susan. Jeanne was a member of the Mecosta County church that Linda had attended during her carefree, electricity-free life up north before marrying electricity-free me.

“Jeanne! What are you doing down here? Is this your little niece?” Linda exclaimed. Shepherding them into the dining room, Linda immediately kicked over the oscillating fan that sat on a small footstool just inside the doorway. Stanley Sue, who was pacing Bertha’s cage top in search of a way of biting the bunny through the bars, jumped and flapped her wings at the noise. “That thing
again,” Linda complained, as I righted the much abused fan. It barely survived a four-hour span before getting its face pressed against blue linoleum. Its grille was bashed in within a molecule’s breadth of the blades, resulting in intermittent ticking that numbered its days in our employ.

“Look at all these cages,” marveled Jeanne in a tone of voice I had lately begun to recognize as meaning, “Are you people out of your minds?” Reaching behind the refrigerator, Linda grabbed the end of an ugly plywood board and let it crash to the floor within inches of my stockinged foot, forming a two-foot-high, partially effective rabbit-proof barrier between the dining room and the rest of the house.

“I’ll let the bunny out in a minute,” Linda explained.

“I thought Susan might enjoy visiting the 4-H fair,” offered Jeanne, whose pinched mouth indicated that she wondered whether the fairgrounds would be less chaotic than our house. “This is my favorite niece in all the world.”

“Jeanne, have you met my husband, Bob?”

“You got pigtails,” said the little girl.

“I wish my hair was as pretty as yours,” Linda answered.

“Aunt Jeanne, I’m your
only
niece.”

By this time, I had safely squeezed behind Stanley Sue’s cage and table, retreating to the far end of the room to pry an ornery Ollie off his perch. Chester was obligingly trilling an aria that earned him a more puzzled than appreciative glance from Linda’s friend, who hadn’t moved from her entry point beside the peninsular counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen. Stanley Sue, handsome as a small hawk and bristling with intelligence, got a brief moment of glory when she delicately plucked a peanut from Susan’s fingers. “Isn’t she a good girl? Stanley’s a very good girl,” Linda observed. I brought Ollie over to show the pair, dangling him upside down from my finger. Cradling his back in the palm of my hand, I
spread a wing to show off his secret yellow feathers, receiving a painful bite for my trouble and a polite mumble from Jeanne.

The seven-year-old rewarded me by voicing my least favorite question in the world. “Does he talk?” she asked. I considered the question a cliché on the same order of asking a dog owner if his black Lab could speak. Of course, we always made the same inquiry of other parrot owners, but as bird people we were exempt from such taboos. I was spared the need to answer when the aunt’s and niece’s eyes simultaneously locked on Howard.

“Look at the beautiful pigeon, Aunt Jeanne,” cried the seven-year-old.

“He doesn’t talk,” I said a little hotly, bitter that the ringneck had once again trumped every other animal in the room by magnetically generating interest all out of proportion to his attributes. Our ownership of Ollie and Stanley Sue was hard won, and it bothered me that trouble-free Howard grabbed the glory. It happened so frequently, I had formulated a theory. People expected to see parrots as pets. Few North Americans had ever encountered them in any other context. But nobody anticipated seeing a dove in an indoor cage. Insofar as the attention reflected back on me, I was happy to nestle Howard in my hands, presenting him first to Susan, who squealed at my suggestion that she stroke his silky back, and to Jeanne, who was obviously experiencing her first contact with a winged pet. Her finger brushed his feathers, then jerked back as the dove craned his neck backward and flicked his beak against my palm. I released him, and he flew hooting to the top of his cage.

“Want to come out, ’keets?” Linda opened the parakeets’ door before busying herself in front of the refrigerator assembling four glasses of what she referred to as “fizzy water”: carbonated water topped off with an inch of cranberry juice. Jeanne ducked slightly as the parakeets first hit the air, then stood with a hand covering
her hair until she felt foolish enough to remove it. I was about to snag my beverage and leave Linda to her guests when I heard Susan exclaim, “He’s riding piggyback!”

Not only had Reggie alighted on Howard, but he was also engaging in the most lurid display of interspecies affection that I had witnessed to date. Squawking in a high-pitched buzz, the blue parakeet curled his extended wings around Howard’s sides in passionate embrace, the better to throw his whole body weight behind the grinding of his lower abdomen against his unlikely mate. In metronome fashion, his blue and black ribbon of a tail chugged back and forth against Howard’s stout tail feathers. Equally enraptured, Howard wobbled his head back to give Reggie the avian equivalent of a kiss, beak rapidly rubbing against beak, his pupils dilated, his quivering carriage slanted forward in a submissive stoop.

“What are they doing?” Susan asked in wonder.

Because children raised in the country learn the facts of life in animal terms almost as soon as they can crawl around the sex-crazed barnyard, Linda laughed and told her visitors, “Reggie’s trying to mate with Howard. He’s a little bit mixed up.”

I waved a stained dish towel in the birds’ direction, once, twice, three times, and like adulterers in the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn, they parted without a glance. Jeanne’s face, however, was anything but nonchalant. “That was a funny game, wasn’t it?” asked Jeanne, shooting Linda a pained looked indicating that the sordid scene wasn’t suitable for discussion in front of a youngster. “I wonder what kind of games they’ll have at the fair? You like Whack the Mole the best, don’t you Susan?”

“I like watching the animals play.”

“You can see all the animals from way on top of the Ferris wheel,” concluded Jeanne, who was obviously fearing a worst-case
scenario of lusty pigs and goat satyrs.

I slunk upstairs to let Linda mediate, returning just a few minutes later to bid aunt and niece good-bye. At the door, Jeanne leaned her head into Linda’s and told her with a smile, “We enjoyed our visit. But I don’t think I’ll bring Susan back until she’s a little older.” That marked the first time anyone had branded our house an adult establishment.

H
OWARD SOON DEMONSTRATED
a talent for thievery. Later that week, as I reviewed an album by a South African chorale group for my column, a song caught my attention on Black Umfolosi’s
Festival Umdlalo
. It was an a cappella ditty called “Inobembela Njiba.” Since my Kalanga language skills weren’t up to snuff, I relied on the liner notes to learn that the song was about “a dove that steals from granaries and is then bewitched, resulting in it wandering around aimlessly in a confused state.” I didn’t know whether Howard had been bewitched, but his confused state was inarguable. The stealing reference was right on target, too. When not falling prey to Reggie’s charms, Howard’s favorite pastime was preying on our other birds’ food.

Howard was energetic in his thievery. He had to be in order to squeeze his handbag of a body through the wallet-size door of the parakeets’ cage only to revel in the exact same food he received in his own seed cup every day. Eating was secondary to the relentless search for some obscure fantasy delicacy that loomed large in his peanut brain. Using his beak as a rake, he dug deep into the dish to scatter impressive quantities of seeds admirable distances across the dining room. Compared to Howard, messy Ollie at mealtime was Miss Manners. Not even Stanley Sue discarded food with the dedication of our dove. I took to winding adding-machine tape around the invaded cage, threading it in and out of the bars as a
backstop, which left heaps of otherwise untouched parakeet seed on the cage bottom. For all the industry of his mining operation, Howard retrieved few nuggets to his liking. He swallowed them whole with a total disregard for taste, leaving me to wonder if he weren’t an aesthete whose love of food was driven by the pursuit of textural perfection.