Sunday, February 15, 2009

SENSELESS BIRD ATTACK AT INNOCENT HAMSTER'S GRAVE





Today, I decided to go visit Charlie’s little grave. I was just looking for an excuse to go for a walk to San Francisco's Lafayette Park, and I thought it would be a good idea to make sure his grave was intact. I wanted to make sure no squirrel had gotten him.

I decided to stroll along the tree-lined path, listening to the radio. Suddenly, I felt some scratching on my head, as if I had run into a tree branch. “What in the world did I run into? I am not walking under a tree branch.”

I spun around and looked for the offending branch. But all I saw was a bird flying up to settle himself on a limb about a foot or two away from me. It was that bird! He landed on my head by accident! He thought my tangled, dark hair was a nest? Is he hurt?

I looked at him sitting contentedly in the foliage. Didn’t look hurt in the slightest. Just a wrong turn of some sort, I guess.

So I walked over to Charlie the Hamster’s grave. It hadn’t been disturbed. He was a nice hamster, a crafty hamster. I never had a cage he didn’t escape, and, once out, he always walked over to where I was. At the stove cooking, in the front room reading, still under my covers sleeping. He wanted fame and food for feats.

So, here I stood. Charlie was dead. I lingered for a minute, peacefully examining the earth into which his little body was set. He’ll always be home; the only cage one can’t escape, I thought.

I turned around and started to walk back the way I came, passing through the line of trees. I felt another scratching on my scalp. I looked up just fast enough to see the same bird lifting off! I saw his telltale, pipe-cleaning legs trailing behind his butt – like the wheels on the backside of a departing plane.

He was again sitting on a twig a few feet above me, quite calm. I stood there looking at him. My mouth was open with shock like a live clam who’d just been thrown to the scalding-hot, boiling pot of life.

“Why are you DOING this to me?” I said, my hand checking for bird poop in my hair. There was none. He did not peck me, so there was no blood.

The bird, perhaps a Brown headed Cowbird, found his same seat on the branch and continued sitting. I know some birds around here lay eggs in the nests of other species. I wondered if he thought my hair was a comfy-looking bed.

I turned around and began to walk once more, turned once to look back at him, then finally continued home.

What was I going to do about it, anyway? Call the San Francisco Police Department?

I hoped that nobody saw me. It looked like I’d been talking to a tree. Nobody would see me from 15 feet off and figure I was talking to this Alfred Hitchcock-inspired bird.

The strangest thing about this May of 1998 story is it’s TRUE. This really happened. Who am I going to tell? Anyone who’s ever read my cat and dog stories is going to think this is just another of my elaborate lies. But it isn’t.

In fact, makes me wonder if this bird read one of them.

Later, I told my friend John. He believed me, but advised me not to tell too many other people, unless I knew them well. John had spent years roaming about Central America.

“Do you think the bird looked at my messy hair and took it for a nest?” I asked John.

John’s face turned serious at that instant. There was a vivid memory in the air above our heads, every bit as real as that bird at Lafayette Park.

“No. Even in the South American jungle, when a war is on, and fighters are dressed in tree camouflage to fool the enemy, the birds know the difference. The birds never land on soldiers dressed as trees,” he said. “They know.” -- end --






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