The topic for this task
was Birds and members were asked to write 300
words. See below for some of the
responses.
The Birds...
by
Beverley Asmus
Two pieces of cod; one scoop of chips served on a
polystyrene tray. Thin white paper envelope. Ineffective
insulator against cooling sea breezes; used to be layers of
newspaper - and far more chips, he silently grouched, gaze
stubbornly fixed on St. Helena Island and a flock of keening
gulls flying low over the mudflats.
His hand rummaged for fish, came up with chip. Knew she had
fared better. Listening to each tiny bite she made into
steaming white flesh, he imagined he heard the sound of batter
melting in her mouth. He felt foolish; over-shy with her.
‘Nice,’ she murmured, and he wanted her to be talking about
him, not the taste of fish. What could he say? Or had enough
been said? On the phone: When he called to arrange this
meeting. After so long. The funeral notice in the Courier
Mail: Dearly beloved husband of: Father to: Grandfather of:
etc. etc.
The service at St. Paul’s: A whispered greeting: “So nice
of you to come. All these years, etc., etc.
‘May I call you?” He had surprised himself by that. It
sprang, unbidden, after he pecked the still dewy flesh of her
cheek, chalky white above the mourning black linen of her
dress.
‘Yes, but not straight away,” her softly spoken answer even
more surprising.
That was three months ago. Now they were back here. On this
park bench. This particular park bench! On Manly Esplanade.
Sharing a meal. Could be the very same bench they sat on forty
years previously. When she told him she had met someone else.
Liked him more. Jim. Jim Whatisname. Dearly beloved Jim...
“Ha!”
‘Did you say something?’
‘No... Yes. Look at those gulls. Do you think they are from
the same family...’ his voice trailed out. Major problem with
aging, the brain doesn’t filter as it should. Stupid thing to
say... Now what?
‘I think they would be, don’t you? Her answer spoke beyond
words.
Courage taken, he turned his head. Found clear blue eyes
welling with tears.
‘Yes, of course they are.’
This time he looked where his hand was heading. Fingers
found fingers; squeezing together in mutual understanding of
continuity.
In a while, the chips would grow cold. Then they would
break them into little pieces to feed the birds – just as they
used to do.
This Bird...
by Wendy Squire
I always thought of my family as birds. My father is a hawk
or should I say was a hawk, for he is dead now and I certainly
hope he hasn’t transmigrated into the body of a real hawk -
no, that would be far too unfortunate for the poor bird. But
he was definitely hawk-like, always hovering over me in a
predatory fashion, eager for the times when the coast was
clear and he could pounce upon his prey.
‘Do the dishes, Sylvie,’ he would say to my mother. Sylvie
was a sparrow, a drab little hop-around, pecking at every
crumb of attention, grovelling as the orders were dished out,
acting as if she didn’t know what was really going on. But she
knew all right and she hopped on meekly doing what sparrows do
best - blending into the background as if her very existence
depended upon it. And it did. ‘Do the dishes, Sylvie. Donna
and I are going for a drive- ’ he’d say and she knew exactly
what he meant and what was in store for me, just as well as I
did. Donna, the gift, the sacrifice, the daughter laid bare.
Donna the beautiful dove. A white dove - white, once
symbolising innocence and purity - then white, the garb of
those who enter the underworld in the land of fairie, going to
their doom.
My sister, Cassie, was a cuckoo and that’s what saved her.
A big fat alien lump born into a family of skinny birds, she
blobbed out more and more layers of fat until even the chairs
were repulsed and refused to let her fit. Mother Sparrow
waited on her hand and foot, feeding her up something shocking
- at least in this way Cassie managed to engage the revulsion
of the in-house predator.
Una, our youngest sister, was saved by her ugliness. She
wasn’t plain - she was downright undisguisably ugly with
waddling feet and monstrous hands, a long neck like a chimney
and acne-scarred skin. I wished we could exchange shapes - for
who notices an ugly duckling in the company of a snow-white
dove? When her legs grew to match the rest of her, she became
an elegant swan and flew away. Now she’s a fashion model who
struts the catwalk with beautiful feathers, visible rib-cage
and drug-filled eyes.
And now, after many years of exile, we’ve all travelled
home to bury the sparrow, but my sisters got there first.
‘Don’t bury her until I get there,’ I requested from the
opposite end of the country. So they put her body in cold
storage at the morgue and, ten days later, here I am at the
funeral home. Sparrow’s been placed in a coffin and trundled
into the viewing room, where an attendant leaves me to pay my
respects. Respects? I don’t think so.
There she is - the same pathetic sparrow, only much smaller
than I remember, shrunken now, bony and frail.
So you came at last, my little dove, says her puny little
spirit voice in my mind. Was she another of his victims, just
like me? No, she was not like me. She left me unprotected to
protect herself, the shameless self-seeking symbiotic
sparrow...she had to turn away, because if the victim wasn’t
me, it would be her.
A hot sensation on my cheek like a tear. No, this can’t be.
Crying never helped me - gave it up years ago. Freeze,
whispers the corpse voice. Freeze? What, like you did? I
seethe and shake. And I realise these tears are not for her.
Alive or dead, some things are unforgivable. Looking the other
way when the hawk strikes, pretending the little dove’s body
is not being ripped apart and half-devoured, deflowered,
debased, degraded, defiled - then stuffed back together again
for the next dismemberment and the next. After a while there’s
not much to pretend about, is there, because it’s all
normalised - there’s no blood left, only fine unruffled
feathers on show - the real bird has flown and all that
remains beneath is an empty egg-shell, like part of a
collection on a shelf. And those collecting the dead things
gloat over its outward perfection. They don’t need to take up
a magnifying glass to detect the minute hole where the soul
has exited, because they know where it is - they made it!
Resentment? Yes. Justifiable anger? Yes. So why then, in
spite of it all, does something warm stir within me as I view
her smallness? Is it pity? Pity for a whole life reduced to
this?
In a foolish moment of compassion, I bend over her frozen
body and kiss the sparrow cheek. Arghh!!! Horror of horrors -
I am stuck! My lips are frozen to her skin, unable to move
without tearing, ripping, bleeding. Even in death she has
reclaimed her hold! I try to call for help but all that
emerges is a cooing sound, as ineffectual as it ever was, a
muffled cry into a death-mask.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT HIM AND TAKEN US ALL WITH YOU! shrieks
my mind.
It’s hard to fly when the cold from your heart creeps into
your wings, she whimpers. And a worse horror envelops me -
maybe the cold in my heart is crippling me and I’m becoming
just like her - NO !!!!!!!!!!
Cream is applied to my lips by the kind funeral attendant
and I’m able to move away from the scrawny corpse.
‘You’d been in here a long time,’ says the attendant. ‘ I
thought I’d better see if you were OK.’
Yes, I’m more than OK. I’ve confronted my demons and I’m
determined not to lock myself up and wither away in a cage
like she did. No, this bird is going to be the dove of peace,
flying free at last.
Over the Back
Fence... by F N Karmatz
This had never happened before.
There they were, all seven of them, almost wing to wing,
sitting on the back fence. All the different species, with
different instincts and differing needs, lined up, their eyes
focused on me, but still aware of one another. In the middle,
an undersized kookaburra, a raptor, with a peculiarly twisted
beak that prevented him from swooping and catching a rodent or
skink on his own; he was first to land, just where he usually
did every morning.
To his left, a young magpie landed a few seconds later, an
omnivorous ground scavenger; On the kookaburra’s right, a
rainbow lorikeet alit, a honey-eater, perhaps one of the
regulars who came for the soaked wholemeal bread; he had never
been hand fed. And next to him a wary, red-eyed spangled
drongo, a treetop insect eater who had left in September and
returned two months early. A little further away a
black-headed grey cuckoo-shrike perched and made guttural
sounds; he too was a treetop-bird, an insect, moth eater.
The male mudlark was always around. He looked up from the
grass and saw the others on the fence, then flew up and joined
them. He wasn’t about to lose out on a meal. Next, the noisy
miner, curious, flew down from the tea tree and landed next to
the mudkark. Now there were seven. Not a sign of xenophobia
among them.
Did they recognize one another? Likely. It was their
territory. But they came for more than just a free meal. They
felt no threat and put aside their fears. They waited
patiently while I clumsily opened up three containers—soaked
bread, beef strips and mince. I dangled a beef strip above the
kooka’s beak. He grasped it from the side, throwing it upward
so that the raw meat dropped into his gizzard.
I offered a piece of soft bread to the lorikeet—it took it
gently in its beak. A small ball of raw mince to the drongo.
The magpie simply gulped and swallowed a larger mince ball.
Out of hand reach, I tossed mince to the cuckoo-shrike;
hand-fed bread to the noisy miner; mince was hand fed to the
peewee. Not one tried to steal from the other. The
hand-feeding ritual continued for about ten minutes; the
kookaburra, who always took preference, had his fill and flew
off first. He was followed by the cuckoo-shrike and then the
drongo. The lorikeet flew down to my feet, where he had
dropped some of his bread crumbs. Several crested pigeons
pecking at bread crumbs nearby joined him.
These were magic minutes, not just the act of hand-feeding
wild birds, but that flock birds and predators, birds that
didn’t like or ignored one another or that guarded their
territories against other winged invaders, sat quietly and
swallowed their morning meals. It was as if I had passed the
food dishes around at the family dining table, with each
taking its preference. That’s not really anthropomorphism.
Rather, like humans, the birds were affected by their social
environment.
What I offered them was neutral territory, a fence they
could perch on and not feel threatened. Why did they accept
hand-feeding, when usually they would catch food on the fly,
tossed to them from a safe distance? No deep reason. They saw
the kookaburra being hand-fed and thought in their pragmatic
bird-like manner: ‘it’s an easy meal, why not? I don’t have to
ferret out or chase anything.’
How do birds think? Do they just act instinctively. Do they
have feelings that go beyond the basics of pain, hunger or
fear, safety and satisfaction? Do they understand our sounds?
Of course they do. They create and understand complex songs,
calls of caution, territory and ownership.
What is the human attraction to birds? Likely the same as
to a dog. It’s the instinctive parenting or fostering in us.
In exchange for food, shelter and safety, a dog gives us its
trust and love.
A bird is much the same; it perches near you, flutters its
wings for food, trusts you both to supply the food and to
provide a safe haven. You do it just as you give a bottle to a
child, a bone to a dog, or mince to a drongo—there is a
parental bonding in doing so, however temporary. And as any
mother will tell you, your parenting instinct gives you a
feeling of immense satisfaction.
The spangled drongo who returned early not only knew where
and who its benefactor was, but also knew how to get
attention. It perched on a branch in the patio and shrilly
whistled one of its songs several times. Its recursive song is
our point of coincidence. It is recursion that is basic to
both human and bird grammar.
When I as a carer responded by coming out and talking to
it, it softly flapped its wings, the same as a chick would do
when showing its parent that it was hungry. “OK, OK, you wait
and I’ll see what I have.” When I walked over to the live worm
box, the drongo followed and sat on its edge. It waited, while
I dug around in the bran. “Here ya go.” He easily caught and
swallowed the squirming morsel. Birds may not be able to
change their expressions, but they can communicate by
fluttering or whistling. He gently picked up and swallowed
several other mealy worms from my hand. “No more, now.” My
upturned palm was empty. He looked at me, understood, and flew
off.
I can’t remember the exact quote British naturalist David
Attenborough made, but this is close: ‘If you give birds
little reason to fight, compete or chase, I've found, they
often don't.’
Harvard psychologist Brian Hare wrote that dogs are
astonishingly skilled at reading human patterns of social
behaviour, especially behaviours related to food and care.
That innate concept applies to birds, too, though perhaps to a
lesser degree.
Seven different bird species sat next to each other on my
fence. It won’t happen again. And likely I will meet
skepticism when I describe the event. But I’ll remember the
moment. I held out my hand to them, with food of course, and
they literally and symbolically accepted it. They’ll come
back, singly, tomorrow or before dark. They’ll again play to
my inborn behavioural patterns.
