Birds

Birds Of A Feather

So about a month ago, I looked out the door that leads to our upper balcony and there was a bird sitting on the railing—a kind of bird I’d never seen before. It was very exotic, all white feathers dotted with black. But the most unusual thing was that its underwings and tailfeathers were PINK. How had I missed a bird like this in our neighbourhood all these years? I took a photo and google imaged it, and it came back “Racing Pigeon”. Well, it didn’t look very fast to me, and the pigeon in the picture didn’t have pink feathers. But this bird DID have a band on its leg, which meant it must belong to someone. So I did what any normal person would do—I asked Ken.

Me: Apparently the bird that’s been hanging around the balcony is a racing pigeon.
Ken: Racing to where?
Me: No idea. But it didn’t win, OBVIOUSLY, KEN. What should I do? The interweb says they’re domesticated, and it looks sad, like it’s lost.
Ken: Post something on the local Buy and Sell site. Maybe someone knows who it belongs to.

So I did that. It turned out that no one, in fact, knew who it belonged to, and I had to delete my post after several very rude comments about pigeon pie and an argument between some of the responders about the best way to catch a pigeon, and as a side note, why are people so stupid online these days? But I DID hear from someone who said there was a racing pigeon group that came to our town on weekends to train their birds, and this one must have gotten lost, so I was like, great, have them come get their bird—here’s a picture of it in our tree. An hour later, a car pulls up and two guys jump out. They have a cage with another pigeon and a platform on a long, retractable pole. At this point, MY pigeon is in a tree in the back yard. They tether the other pigeon to a blue platform and extend the pole. My pigeon immediately freaks out and flies away.

Pigeon Guy: Oh no. This one is trained to come to a yellow platform. We brought a blue one.
Me: Pigeons aren’t colour blind?
Pigeon Guy: No. The blue platform confused it.
Me: Do you have a yellow one?
Pigeon Guy: No.

And they left.

But they gave me the contact information for actual owner and this was the conversation:

Me: Your pigeon is still here if you want to get it.
Pigeon Guy 2: Are you able to catch her? If you have any cage, you can put some seed in cage and maybe she can get catch.

Like WTF? No, my dude, I am not a bird wrangler, I do not own a bird cage (aside from an antique one that sits on my piano), and I don’t have bird seed! So I asked if he knew anyone local who could come and get her, and that was the last I heard from him. So the next morning I bought bird seed and put some out in a bowl in the corner of the balcony. An hour later, she was eating as much as she could, then fell asleep next to the deck box—she must have been starving and exhausted, poor thing.

And now Penelope (because apparently she is my bird now and that is what I have decided to name her), lives in a tree above my balcony and I feed her every day, much to the delight of the other thousands of birds that live on our property and like to poop all over the table while they eat. But we’ve established a good routine—every morning, I go out onto the balcony and yell “Pen Pen” until she looks down at me with complete disdain (that’s what you get for making sure she doesn’t starve to death), and she waits until I go in the house before she descends/condescends to eat.

But then I started worrying, as one does, about if the other birds were being mean to her (those starlings are DIVAS), and what would happen when it got colder, so I reached out to a Pigeon Rescue group and let me tell you, pigeon people are nuts. I only asked if anyone knew of a local Pigeon Rescue who would come and get her, and I was inundated once again with instructions (these examples are verbatim) on how to catch her:

1.  Feed her in a cage or shed. Lure her in at first so she can assess the entrance and get comfortable with the concept of going back inside a “loft”. Don’t feed her outside.

Seriously? This bird is gonna “assess the entrance”? She couldn’t even find her way back to a yellow platform.

2. You can use a dog crate or bird cage put wild seed in it and tie a string or twine to the door. Sprinkle wild bird seed inside to lead her in, then pull the string to close the door and catch the bird.

I’m sorry, WHUT?? This bird might be navigationally challenged but she’s not STUPID. She’s gonna take one look at that string and know EXACTLY what I’m up to.

3. Buy some dove food at PetSmart and then you can easily catch her with a laundry hamper upside down. You don’t need any experience. All you need is a hamper some string and a few bricks to set on top of hamper once it’s inside. It’s really easy. When it’s under the laundry basket call me/

OMFG. No, lady, I’m not Wile E. Coyote-ing this bird with an Acme laundry hamper. Seriously, is there NO ONE who can just come and catch this very expensive beautiful bird? Because trust me, if I COULD catch her, I would. Frankly, I don’t think she WANTS to be caught—I mean considering how much freedom and free food she has, who would? At this point, I’ve covered the table on the balcony with yellow paper plates and a yellow plastic tablecloth, hoping she’s soothed by the colour and gets used to me, because I really want to fulfill my fantasy of having a pigeon who’s “comfortable with the concept” of sitting on my shoulder like I’m a pirate. But if anyone tries to give me more advice on how to catch her, I have one thing to say: Flock off.

As I Was Saying

The other day, I was out shopping, buying designer purses and vintage lamps, as one does.
When it came time to pay, I had a couple of coupons but wasn’t sure how to use both of them for the transaction. I asked the store worker at the self-checkout, and she said, “It’s easier if I do it for you; it’s like killing two birds with one shovel.” I immediately did a double-take, first because things seemed to have escalated quickly from talking about thrifting coupons to violently murdering birds, and second, because as far as I know, the original saying is “Kill two birds with one stone” and where the hell did the shovel come from?! I mean, the original saying is bad enough—I suppose it means accomplishing two things at once, but who was the sadist who thought the best metaphor for that was the slaughter of our avian friends with projectiles? And now we’ve upped the game to some bizarre game of stealth, because there’s no way you can bludgeon two birds with one shovel unless you have the reflexes of a ninja (and the soul of a serial killer). And it got me thinking about other weird sayings:

1) A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush

Is it really though? Have you ever actually tried to hold a bird in your hand? Those little f*ckers get pretty pecky. I’d much rather have two birds merrily singing in a bush than one of them trying to bite my damn finger off.

2) Eating crow

This saying is interchangeable with “eating humble pie” and let me tell you, I’d much rather eat pie than a crow. Is the crow IN a pie, like in that weird song about some king eating 24 blackbirds? And how is crow best served, anyway? Personally, if I was forced to eat a crow, I’d like it in a stir fry, smothered with spicy peanut sauce and served with a side of rice noodles. Or I could just not eat it at all, because according to the first idiom, I would have to kill it with a stone. Or a shovel. Neither of those options sounds appealing.

3) Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

Were old-timey people really this villainous, with their birdicide and baby neglect? I used to think that this expression meant one thing, but apparently I was wrong:

Me: So throwing the baby out with the bathwater refers to someone being stupid, right? Like “He’s so dumb, he threw the baby out with the bathwater.” And then he had to go get the baby and give it another bath because it was all muddy and whatnot?
Ken: No, it’s an old saying from when people only bathed once a week. First, the grandparents had a bath, then the parents, then all the kids. By the time the baby’s turn came, the water was so dirty that no one realized the baby was in the bathtub.
Me: So the person who was bathing the baby was like, “Yawn, think I’ll go have a drink” and just forgot about the baby? I suspect my initial assumption was right.
Ken: No, it means losing something you really like along with something you don’t.
Me: Well, I like babies. I’m changing this to “throwing the pearls out with the jewelry box”.
Ken: Random, but OK.

4) Like taking candy from a baby

This expression is SUPPOSED to mean that something was really easy, but it’s completely inaccurate. Have you ever actually tried to take candy from a baby? They will scream and pout and generally make your life miserable. I wasn’t even allowed to dip into Kate’s Hallowe’en haul without being accused of grand larceny. Seriously. Just TRY taking candy from babies. They will cut you.

Of course, the current popular expression around our house is “What’s for you won’t go by you” which is something my dad always says, and which I take to mean that if something is meant for you, then fate will find a way to make it happen. I’ve been saying this a lot lately as there are a few things on my wish list. If only wishes were horses, then birds would ride…no wait…I’d be as happy as a bird in sh*t…no wait…it would be the best thing since sliced birds…no wait…

Bad Omens

Last Sunday afternoon, our new neighbours contacted us, wondering if we wanted to go kayaking with them. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so Ken and I agreed. We launched at one bridge outside of town, with the intention of getting out at the next bridge which, by car, was less than two minutes away. It was a gorgeous day, and after paddling for ABOUT AN HOUR, I said, “Hey, how long is this going to take?” because my shoulder was still not 100% despite the 4 shock wave treatments I’d had. And let me clarify for everyone right now that it’s NOT electroshock—it’s sound waves and has nothing to do with my brain at all, although if it did, I might have been able to think twice about a kayak trip that looked like it would take half an hour as the crow flies, but in fact took over two hours as the river meanders.

Anyway, we’d been on the water for a little while and it was very peaceful. Suddenly around the bend, we saw a giant bird. It was a green heron, sitting on the bank. As we got closer, Ken tried to get a picture of it, but it took off, flapping its giant wings. We were sad, but not too much farther upstream, there was another green heron. And then a blue heron. And then a WHITE ONE. And what I had forgotten is that herons are not so much a breathtaking natural wonder but a very bad omen. Once, many years ago when I was still teaching, I had a department head who was an earth mother type. She and her husband had just installed a huge pond in their backyard, and stocked it with very large and expensive koi fish. One morning, she came into our office, breathless with excitement.

“I looked out my kitchen window,” she said to all of us gathered around, “and there, shrouded in the morning mist, stood a heron. It was so majestic and wonderful!” (We were English teachers and talked like this all the time).

“Oh!” said a young ingenue. “I just looked it up and herons are a sign of good fortune and progress. Lucky you!”

Everyone mooned about the heron, all of us wishing we had one too. But then the next morning, our leader returned, dejected.

“What’s wrong?” we asked.

“The heron ate all my koi,” she replied tearfully.

So herons are basically harbingers of doom, and if I’d remembered that at the time, I would have paid more attention to the obviously dire message that the string of heron sightings was meant to convey and I wouldn’t have found myself caught up on rocks in a section of rapids, with my kayak rapidly filling up WITH said rapids, screaming to Ken for help. We managed to tip my kayak and drain most of the river out of it right then and there, but the water was moving so fast that I lost my balance several times, causing both my flipflops to come off, leaving me hopping around barefoot on very sharp rocks. I spent the rest of the trip, which took ANOTHER HOUR, sitting in 4 inches of water sans shoes. Still, the weather was charming and the company was good, despite the herons and their pall of ill fortune.

And I would have been well to have remembered that on Wednesday, when I turned from my desk and caught a glimpse of something strange on our front porch railing. From where I was sitting, it looked like a large animal hunched over. My tolerance for things has become remarkably low since the lockdown started so my first reaction was, “What the f*ck is on my porch at 9 o’clock in the morning?!” I was additionally trepidatious, having already been terrorized the day before by a psychotic squirrel that had slammed spreadeagled into the window inches from my head during a meeting, causing me to jump and shriek, which in turn caused my team to jump and yell, “What’s happening?! Should we call 911? Qu’est ce qui se passe? Appelle la police!” And then I had to explain that it was only a squirrel. Outside.

So I very cautiously crept to the front door and peeked out the window to see A HERON perched on my railing. I still hadn’t put two and two together with the bad luck and whatnot, so I was like, “Cool!” I texted Ken: Come down quietly—there’s a heron on the porch.

Slight tangent: Ken and I have always owned houses with two stories, and because I don’t want to damage my voice by constantly yelling up at him, and because Ken has terrible hearing (Ken: No, I don’t! Me: What? I can’t hear you.) we’ve always had either an intercom system, two-way radios, or other means of communication between floors because—and you may be surprised to hear this—I talk a lot. Luckily now we can just text each other.

Ken tiptoed downstairs and we were both amazed at this giant bird just sitting there. We got some pictures before it suddenly spread its massive wings and took off. But then I remembered those ill-fated koi from many years ago and insisted that we go out and check our small pond to make sure the goldfish were still intact. They were. But as we were patrolling the garden, we found a tiny mourning dove with a broken wing in the bushes right below the heron’s perch. After doing some research, we discovered that herons will also attack and eat smaller birds, which explains why it was hovering like a f*cking vulture on my porch railing. Ken called a rehabilitation centre for wildlife in the next town over, and drove the dove there. We haven’t heard if it survived, but I hope so.

Long story short, herons are assholes.