Freakish Friday

Birds, birds, birds…….my first developed gravesite as a young girl was for found dead birds…..I would bury them at the edge of a dirt drift that had been formed from the past winters by a snow plow why did they die…..so many of them. I always felt like I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing or they wouldn’t  be dying……so, I would thank the lifeless bodies for singing to me; and I would bury them all together in the same dirt drift that had been banked the winter before……

A lifetime ago and I still have a deep love and appreciation for birds…. I have a bird. An umbrella cockatoo…..I didn’t have to bury him; although there are moments when I would in a second put him under the dirt! His name is Sony…..cockatoos have a variety of calls….and not all are pleasant…..

 

I actually saved this cockatoo….from a person that was my friend. She had him in a cage so small he was unable to extend the full length of his wings; and she had him shut up in a 10x10 foot room all to himself. He was so unhappy he had begun to pluck his own feathers………I would never have another bird; not that I don’t cherish his presence in my life, because I do. He has been with me now for almost 25 years. He reminds me that life is larger than myself; Sony is very intelligent and I must take care that I do not respond to his negative behavior all the time. What a brat!  I can’t imagine my life without his presence in my life at this moment now……..I could not live with myself, if I discarded him as most would have done….

Two months ago I began to find dead birds in my back patio. I began to bury them giving them the same reverence and prayerful descent as I did in my days as a youth. For there is a bird feeder on the patio that we keep filled; it is an island for all the birds in the neighborhood, and those that are just making their journey to somewhere else……One night in the dark I noticed something shadowing on the outer patio; not moving but I felt it’s presence enough to go in the direction that was shadowed…….it was a small bird just sitting on the patio squares with its head down as though it were asking for forgiveness…….my heart sprung a pain so deep that I weep even now as I share this…….it did not try to get away, nor did it move. I gently picked it up and placed it in a box where it could not be tormented any longer wishing I had the strength to take it out of its misery…..

I now find myself nurturing this lovely animal that originally had amber eyes pictured here, yes, I swear they were amber, thus I named her. So sweet and talkative; reaching gently with her paws, grasping my face……she would lick, lick, lick my face as a mother does when she finds her lost child…….Afterward, I came to the realization that she was the huntress……..she was the creature unable to kill her prey; leaving them to suffer….and now I was nurturing her………..Amberina is what we call her now….I can’t discard her either…….and her eyes are green……