Sad Little Birdie Redux
8/22/1
This is the very first story in my Pre-2000 Adventures on my old page. I'm thinking of anonymizing it and opening the stories back up. Here tis:
The Sad Little Birdie
by Postwood
Tuesday, April 28, 1998 8:05:35 PM
Sad, sad, sad. I was upstairs trying to get the new internet connection to MCI/Yahoo to work and Aisai was outside puttering in the yard. All of the sudden, Aisai calls me and says "I caught a little white bird. Hurry up. Hurry up." I yell downstairs "You caught a little white bird?" and she says "Yeah, hurry up."
So I walk quickly downstairs and out the back door. I don't see Aisai so I call to her. She answers and says she is beside the A/C units. I go over there and there is Aisai, the a/c units, and an upside down bucket. I say "So where's the bird" she says "under the bucket" and I say "Well, lift the bucket" and she says "What and let him fly away?" and I say "Oh, yeah. Let's leave him under there".
After Aisai took the bucket off the little birdie we could see him. He sure wasn't very scared of us. He was a little white finch. Well, we had to catch him again and he flew all over the place but couldn't fly for over 10 feet at a time. He camped out under my car for a while and then decided that he would fly over to the neighbors. We caught him on the boat of Mike, the neighborhood boatman.
Well, obviously someone lost their bird. We asked our neighbors to the north. No, they had no pets. In fact, she named off several species that she did not have for us, just in case we needed to know that also. We asked some neighbors who are 3 houses north and behind us, they didn't have any birds, and didn't want this one. But they were pleasant, don't get me wrong.
Well, we also tried to call Labman, a guy that I work with. He is big on birds. He raises mccaws, emu, ostrich, and lots of different kinds of cranes (including saurus cranes which are hard to get). Well, I didn't know his phone number. In the book it showed a [his name], so I call that and a female voice on an answering machine picks up. Well, unless Labman�s dog can talk, there aren't any other females there (now that I think of it, maybe it was a gal he knows that he had make the recording for him. Nah, it was still the wrong road).
There was an [similar name] listed on another wrong road, but why call that guy. I even called directory assistance and let some lady in Louisiana be rude to me. I guess I could have figured out that she didn't have the info either, but she didn't have to snap at me, sheesh.
Aisai didn't want to let the birdy go. So the next idea was see if Labman was logged on via the ICQ network. Well, and Aisai doesn't know this yet, I couldn't get logged onto the ICQ network since I left my machine at work logged in. Oops. Didn't occur to me until just now.
Note: There will be a place in this story where I will say for the fainthearted to look away. It isn't now. But there is a point coming up.
Well, we were in a conundrum. Should we let the little guy go? I decided to come downstairs with the cat carrier, Zapato's to be exact. Aisai finally got to get the bird out of her hands (she was holding him the whole time). And there he sat on the ground in a cat carrier. After a second he jumped through the bars. We looked at him and one of us said "Obviously not" referring our previous conversation of whether the carrier would hold him or not.
And after looking at us as if to say, "It has been very nice knowing you, but I need to be on my way", he spread his tiny wings and took flight.
That makes a good happy ending. Don't read anymore. Turn away, turn away.
He flew into the neighbor to the north's yard. Specifically onto the porch. He wanted in. Cheep cheep cheep. Aisai and I just sat in our chairs. Then he flew again. Up one more house to the north. The spaniel saw him coming. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP. One of us said "Well, that's that." and we both got up and tried to busy ourselves to get it off our mind. As I was headed indoors, I said to Aisai "Well, at least it doesn't leave you lingering".
At this point at least we have closure. You can stop reading here.
After a while, while I was typing the words "He flew into", Aisai called to me and said "Come look at my bed" meaning the bed she was planting hostas in. I came down stairs and she also told me that the little birdie was still alive and over there. I told her that I didn't want to see Mr. bird anymore. She relayed the following:
The people that live in that house had come out and tried to shoo away the little birdie since it was making the dog crazy and was cheeping at them. Aisai went up there to explain the whole deal to them and while she was doing so the little birdie flew at the little girl. The little girl obviously mistook the little white finch for a vampire bat and screamed out.
I then told Aisai I didn't want to hear anymore. She honored my request.
The end.