22.9.08

Whoever carnally knows a dead body or an animal or bird is guilty of bestiality, which is a misdemeanor.

She had yellow feathers, right till the end, even though she was very very old. Older than the pet store said she was, that's true, because they tested her bones or her marrow after she was gone and she was found to be quite old. Too old, I can't remember how old she was, but too old for me to have made it probably if she had been how old I thought she was and grown to how old she died at. Too old for me. So a good thing.

The yellow feathers aren't just for camouflage out in the jungle, the Doctor related to me when she would get a check up. I don't think Canary's are in the Jungle even, he said, and I think he was right. A canary in the jungle? No, that's not right. They're for looking pretty, he suggested to me, that they are to show how pretty you are when somebody looks at you, somebody presumably a bird.

Yellow feathers weren't even my favorite part of the bird. She had a squawking beak and the noise would ring out all night like she was terrified and I'd get up or Robert would get up, before Robert passed, but after, I'd get up and I'd rub her head right on the front part of the feathers so they would get all bristly. She would just stop, stone dead stop cold as a fish and stare into the blackness, like I was some sort of monster who had just come in from hell to comfort her! She was probably a confused little bird those nights, so terrified and happy from a fingertip.

But she was also an unpleasant animal in the evenings when I was trying to eat and she would dive onto my food, I'd shout, get off, goddamn it, get off my food! Get your own food, and I'd smack her against the garbage can. You can be too nice to a bird, when they're trying to eat on your potatoes, eat up all your peas. This is human food and I buy expensive nuts and greasy tins of meat for her, and I let her outside on the line and she eats sparrows which gets me complained about from neighbors but I tell them to get off my yard and have spoilt relations with them since, for her, so don't tell me like I'm hateful to my bird.

The yellow feathers are still stuck into some of my furniture. I thought when she was gone I could make a pillow out of her, but the ends stuck out and poked me when I lay on it and it was a very small pillow, not much more than a pant pocket. So I just let a few of them stick out, near the top of the sofa, like thinning hair. Some red feathers would go beautifully with them, because I have this tan sofa-cover, but I am too old now to buy another bird. Instead, I get those several feathers and my pillow, on which I sewed a picture of my bird, as she is singing.

No comments: