Jun 03 25
We found a hurt bird in the yard — mentally or physically, we couldn’t tell. The little thing kept flying and haphazardly crashing into the high, gray, cinder block wall that runs along the east side of our yard.
Eventually, the small, raggedly feathered clump seemed to give up entirely, chest heaving on the hot unkempt lawn — with an absolutely, pointed, pathetic, tender vulnerability. Pushing through the mixed feelings of Experience, we intervened.
Surprisingly it gave no protest when we picked it up and placed it in a bucket — which we had hurriedly decorated with torn up grass. A nearby racquet was employed as a roof — an empty coffee mug, and the book we had been reading, put on top to secure it.
With the littlest effort of “research” we found that it was a male Australian Zebra finch. A common, adorable breed of “pet” bird. We gave it the recommended seeds, fruit and water. It ate and drank, quite a bit.
We felt a home was in order; its struggles needed to be rewarded with dignity. We easily found a bird-oriented pet store; naturally there are many in this silly city of foolish dreams.
The strangely dentured proprietor warned us that Zebra finches don’t like to live alone. (Is that right?) So we bought a home and a friend. The new bird is quite robust — much healthier looking than our dirt plumed original. Unsettlingly the new one seems to like to pick and peck at him.
It is just so hard to know what to do.
The most curious occurrence of the entire scenario though, was not the arrival of the tattered finch, but the appearance of a silhouette of a small bird on the bathroom wallpaper. That is, in the lower bathroom, the one closest to where the bird cage now sits, the walls are lined in a fairly pat toile wallpaper (this decorative feature preceded our moving into the house). The motif, repeated floating bucolic scenes on a void of mint green — this incarnation being vacant of people (only trees, shrubs and a distant castle, repeated over and over and over).
We have likely spent hours looking at the four-wall-spanning, replicated theme, but never noticed the small chubby bird on one of the tree branches — not since the arrival of the other bird(s). We are obviously not claiming an eldritch hand painted the things (inspired by these events) but we simply never saw it before.
We wouldn’t go as far as saying that we are disturbed by our omitted notice — but we definitely don’t like the complicated way we came to notice it — that is, what it says about invisibility, focus, periphery, education, and the intricate effects of sticking our beak into things.
Eventually, the small, raggedly feathered clump seemed to give up entirely, chest heaving on the hot unkempt lawn — with an absolutely, pointed, pathetic, tender vulnerability. Pushing through the mixed feelings of Experience, we intervened.
Surprisingly it gave no protest when we picked it up and placed it in a bucket — which we had hurriedly decorated with torn up grass. A nearby racquet was employed as a roof — an empty coffee mug, and the book we had been reading, put on top to secure it.
With the littlest effort of “research” we found that it was a male Australian Zebra finch. A common, adorable breed of “pet” bird. We gave it the recommended seeds, fruit and water. It ate and drank, quite a bit.
We felt a home was in order; its struggles needed to be rewarded with dignity. We easily found a bird-oriented pet store; naturally there are many in this silly city of foolish dreams.
The strangely dentured proprietor warned us that Zebra finches don’t like to live alone. (Is that right?) So we bought a home and a friend. The new bird is quite robust — much healthier looking than our dirt plumed original. Unsettlingly the new one seems to like to pick and peck at him.
It is just so hard to know what to do.
The most curious occurrence of the entire scenario though, was not the arrival of the tattered finch, but the appearance of a silhouette of a small bird on the bathroom wallpaper. That is, in the lower bathroom, the one closest to where the bird cage now sits, the walls are lined in a fairly pat toile wallpaper (this decorative feature preceded our moving into the house). The motif, repeated floating bucolic scenes on a void of mint green — this incarnation being vacant of people (only trees, shrubs and a distant castle, repeated over and over and over).
We have likely spent hours looking at the four-wall-spanning, replicated theme, but never noticed the small chubby bird on one of the tree branches — not since the arrival of the other bird(s). We are obviously not claiming an eldritch hand painted the things (inspired by these events) but we simply never saw it before.
We wouldn’t go as far as saying that we are disturbed by our omitted notice — but we definitely don’t like the complicated way we came to notice it — that is, what it says about invisibility, focus, periphery, education, and the intricate effects of sticking our beak into things.