malcolmd

Eventually I found ham shavings in thin strips, like short worms, to work the best. She even knew I kept them in the fridge and she would hop around more actively when the fridge door opened. Blackberries were a mistake! I couldn't get the purple birdshit out of the beige carpet and I had to buy her a cage after that. She bathed every morning in a bowl of water on the floor and is shaking her feathers dry in the picture. Mostly she sat quietly in the new cage, which was big enough for a couple of parrots and one day while I played some guitar I heard this beautiful little melody coming from Belinda as she sat by the window. She could see and hear the other birds outside and she was growing. I even found out how feathers grow. They start like little straws with hollow middles and then the plume grows out of that. She started making more shrill chippa...chippa noises when the other birds were active in the morning and so I put her out on the balcony to be closer to them and sure enough, she found a boyfriend who hopped on the balcony rail from end to end while she did the same in her cage.... I started to leave the cage door open and she'd hop out from time to time and one day she stood by the open balcony door and my heart stopped. I thought she was going to fly away into a world that would be very different... but she hopped back inside and opted for the cage that afternoon. The next morning I put her out on the balcony with the cage door open and her friend came and sat on the balcony railing. I was listening to them chitter while I worked on the computer and then I heard no more noises and I looked up to see the empty cage and both of them gone. For a moment I felt a little bit sad not to have my little friend anymore but on the other hand I was moved by the desire of this little bird to live. Her determination was incredible. There was never any question of survival...she was just going to do it and the wounds on her body were significant and must have been painful. I felt elated with her choice of... choosing me in that initial moment of desperation. I guess it wasn't much of a choice. Who would you choose? The human or the cats?

At rubbish clean up day I put the cage out on the street for someone else to use and no sooner had I put it down than this young woman came by and picked it up. "Wait!" I said "You haven't got the tray for the bottom.."
"I don't want it!" She said marching down the street and looking back at me. "I'm going to cut it up!" she remonstrated and I looked on in disappointment asking "Why are you going to do that? It was expensive...I put it out for someone to use." But the crazy woman launched into a tirade about how no animal should ever be kept in a cage! "All the cages should be destroyed and I'll be doing my bit for the animals." Were the last things I heard her say and I started to recognise this woman. She'd had a key to my neighbours flat and she was feeding my neighbour's cat while she was away. My final words of "Sometimes you need a cage to protect an animal from predators" fell on deaf ears as the somewhat overweight and irascible woman marched away to her pair of pliers down the grey street in the greying evening light. Every morning afterwards, when I heard the blackbird's early staccato trills, I imagined it was Belinda... and that's why I kept her picture.