The bungalow, with its terra-cotta tiled roof and wide front porch, had a deliberately wild-looking front garden. Fruit trees and bright colors dominated the otherwise tidy space, the recently mowed lawn enclosed by a low, natural wood fence. Still unused to the typical Californian abundance of produce hanging at eye level, so different from the soaring oaks in the south of my childhood, I resisted the urge to pluck a lemon from the branch nearest me before ascending the front steps.
What I knew before meeting Bev: she had seven birds—two cockatiels, two parrots, two budgies, and a conure—plus two vizslas, Hungarian hunting dogs. She was going to Bermuda for her daughter’s wedding.
When Bev opened the door, my impression was midsixties, beautiful, and braless. I was even more impressed by how completely the house was given over to the animals. Birdcages lined the open-plan living room and dining room like furniture, and the couches and chairs were covered in dog blankets and the dogs themselves: lean, with sleek brick-colored coats, mustard yellow eyes, and floppy, velvety looking ears. At only thirty-five pounds or so, their short fur and lithe little bodies conveyed strength and speed. They regarded me with comfortable indifference. Guard dogs they were not.
Bev offered me tea, and a mammoth binder filled with full-color bird biographies, each in its own plastic sleeve. We took a tour of the birds while sipping pungent Lapsang Souchong that tasted like a campfire.
We started in the office in the back corner of the house, which opened out onto an expansive back patio. This was the territory of the budgies—palm-sized, neon-colored noisemakers, from what I’d experienced of these parakeets in the past. They were louder than they were large. According to his profile, Echo—electric green to Bindi’s more muted blue—was a biter. He and Bindi shared the office with Nora, a blue-crowned conure.
I can’t say I’d ever seen a conure before, or, if I had, I didn’t realize I was looking at one. Nora was emerald green up to her neck, where the blue crown took over, her head fully feathered in aquamarine.
“She responds to ‘Be quiet!’ Or you can just put a sheet over her cage.” As if on cue, Nora emitted a screech that I feared might sonicate my bones. Bev looked entirely unruffled, while I was pretty sure I’d peed in my pants a little.
In the middle room, which was more of a hallway between the back of the house and the kitchen, lived Aphrodite and Sterling, both cockatiels.
“Aphrodite curses in Spanish. And she is the loudest.” I felt certain that it was scientifically impossible for her to be any louder than Nora, but I nodded.
“She also replies to ‘Be quiet,’ but she may mouth off at you,” Bev said with a smirk.
I rested my tea on a shelf in the walk-through to free up my hand to take some notes of my own. Nora: holy shit, loud. Aphrodite swears.
In college, my thesis advisor had a talking parrot named Liebling, an African gray. At every meeting, Dr. James proudly showed me the updated list of words that she’d taught the bird.
I was writing my thesis on the nonfiction works of Barbara Kingsolver. I fancied myself an ardent nature- and animal-lover and was an enthusiastic captive audience when Dr. James got talking about her pets. In addition to Liebling, she had two outrageously fluffy American Eskimos. By the time I’d submitted the final draft of my thesis, I was addressing her as Sarah, and she was emailing me pictures of the dogs.
My mom, a linguist by training and an audiologist by profession before she ever got into teaching pronunciation, has always been fascinated by animals’ ability to speak. When she was a student, she studied apes’ ability to sign and communicate with pictures. So whenever my thesis or meetings with my advisor had come up in conversation, she’d always asked about Liebling.
I was already anticipating that this gig would yield plenty of talking-bird gems with which to regale her. And it made me wish I’d kept in touch with Dr. James. Sarah. She’d have surely loved hearing about my talking avian charges and would’ve wanted a complete list of their vocabulary.
“Sterling is a handful,” Bev continued. “He has to be left out of the cage during the day, but he’s a big chewer. He’s afraid of brooms, so if you leave it propped against the door jamb, he won’t go into the kitchen.” She gestured toward the broom that we’d passed under as we came into the back of the house.
It was only then that I noticed the extensive damage to the molding, and what little was left of the windowsills. I could see that the woodwork around the windows and doorframes had once been quite lovely—intricate, even—but had since been gnawed to splinters by one, or perhaps a few, very sharp beaks. Just about everything I’d seen so far looked chewed-on, actually. Chunks of wood were scattered across the floor, and they crunched softly underfoot.
“Make sure Aphrodite’s cage is flush with the wall and that there are plenty of toys attached to her door, or Sterling will break into her cage.”
“Break in?”
“Yeah, he knows how the door works, so he can open it and let her out. The toys distract him. Sterling, I wrote, B&E—watch out!
“This,” she said, turning away from the cages and toward the sideboard, “is the fish. Just a few flakes a day, and he’s fine.” The Fish, few flakes 1x/day. From what I could tell, he didn’t get a page in the massive pet info encyclopedia I was hefting. Or a name, for that matter.
Ducking beneath the broom, Bev led the way through the kitchen, her gauzy tunic trailing behind her. “And then in the front of the house, we have Krishna and Bonsai.” I checked the binder and saw that Krishna was a Red-lored Amazon, Bonsai an African gray, like Sarah’s Leibling.
I was trying to do a quick calculation of how many continents these birds and dogs collectively spanned. Australia, Central and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe. With Bev’s Asian sensibilities, this was a decidedly worldly household.
Like Nora the conure, Krishna was also bright green in the body, but her face was brightly accented with red and orange around the polished knuckle of her beak.
“Krishna has a broken wing. She’ll come out to sit on your finger and have a pistachio or a cashew, but she doesn’t like to be petted.”
I was scribbling furiously as we moved to the last cage, occupied by the surprisingly small and comparatively dull gray parrot.
“Bonsai is a plucker, so he wears this bell to distract him.”
Bonsai jingled as he shifted from one foot to the other, seeming to respond to his name. The bell that hung from his neck looked like an ascot, giving him the dashing air of a dandy. All he needed was a little bird-sized bowler hat.
“He and Sterling don’t get on so well, but Bonsai can always hide in the towel hutch—I’ll show you in a sec.” We hadn’t even gotten to the dogs and their schedule and preferences yet, and I’d already taken two pages’ worth of notes.
The dogs hadn’t moved since I arrived. I assumed Sasha was the smaller of the two. She was curled in a recliner in the corner by the fireplace. Max, sprawled out on the love seat, raised his head from his paws as we entered the living room.
“The dogs can’t take the sun salutation, so they need to go out for their walk.” I discreetly scanned the binder for word on the sun salutation. My mind was going to the yogic practice, which seemed to fit with this woman’s aesthetic. I couldn’t figure how that applied to the dogs. “Otherwise they go crazy, barking and running around. The birds are loud enough as it is without the dogs’ howling along.”
Ah, the birds. The birds’ sun salutation. I was no expert, but I felt pretty sure this was when the birds greeted the rising and setting sun with prolonged squawking. No doubt I’d find a thorough explanation somewhere in the tome I carried.
We headed upstairs to see where the dogs and I would be sleeping. At the top of the steps was a narrow wooden hallway with two rooms to the left and a bathroom at the end. Bev stepped through the first doorway. If I’d expected dog beds or cushions, there were none. It was a small room with two walls of windows, no curtains, and an unmade king-sized bed with mismatched sheets, the flat a plaid and the top sheet a loud Hawaiian print.
“Sasha will sleep up with you. She’s a lovebug. And Max’ll sleep down at the foot of the bed.”
I’d never slept with a dog in a bed, and it sounded kind of lovely. I’d have enthusiastically slept with Biscuit, but, given her inexplicable insistence on remaining outside, this meant infrequent naps with her on a quilt spread out in the yard. Even during the storms that scared her so much, she would only come so far as the basement or the screened-in porch, where she’d cower on her tattered blanket, shaking visibly at each thunderclap.
Bev exited into the hall, and I followed, catching a glimpse of the room adjacent, which seemed to be filled from floor to ceiling with piles of crap—boxes, clothes, paper, and towering stacks of books.
As Bev descended the stairs, she said over her shoulder, “So, do you have any questions?” I mentally scanned the massive information overload of the last half hour or so. Who curses in which language? Who likes which nuts cracked partially, versus hardly at all, versus completely shelled? Had I seen that one of the birds likes buttered toast?
“I think I have everything I need,” I said, patting the binder with more conviction than I was feeling.
“Great. Then here is the key. You have all the contact numbers and emergency info. And plenty of reading material on these guys.”
Bev didn’t own a coffeemaker.
I discovered this on my first morning. I’d made the mistake of pulling the blankets off the birds’ cages as soon as I got downstairs, not fully grasping that this would signal them to wake up at once. Wake up and start cawing.
The dogs were ignoring their breakfast entirely and howling so loudly that I could actually hear them amidst the window-rattling, earth-shaking cacophony of bird calls that was making it hard for me to keep my eyes open and my fingers out of my ears.
I hadn’t slept well the night before, no doubt because I was not at all used to sharing a bed—forget the pillow—with dogs. When I’d gone up to the bedroom to turn in for the night, the bed looked just the same as when Bev had showed it to me—same sheets, unmade, Max’s nest still intact at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t help but feel a little weird about sleeping in already-slept-in sheets. I’d made a mental note to find the washing machine the next morning. Then Sasha had wriggled her way under the covers with me and put her head down on one half of the pillow with a contented-sounding sigh.
Even with Sasha fully tucked in, using the pillow just like a human, she wasn’t as cuddly as I’d expected her to be. She didn’t invite a snuggle at all, but put her legs out straight in front of her so that she occupied the greater half of the bed. With her at my side and Max at my feet, I’d turned out the light. I found myself holding my breath a little, lying stiff and unmoving, in the same way I did when I shared a bed with another person. Like my breathing, or the slightest movement, would disrupt their sleep.
Contrary to the cozy comfort that I’d anticipated in sleeping with these dogs, the reality was that Sasha was a total pillow hog, unselfconsciously exhaling her meaty-smelling dog breath all over my face in the night. When I turned my back to her, seeking out a corner of the bed that I could claim as my own, she also proved expert at kicking me while she slept, the blows landing right in my left kidney.
In the morning, bleary eyed and a little sore, I woke to find myself nose-to-snout with Sasha, her angular head still on my pillow. Max was awake and inching his way up the bed toward us. It wasn’t until I moved to rub his belly that I saw the shiny pink of his raging erection. I threw the covers back without too much regret, in spite of the early hour.
Standing in the kitchen without coffee, wearing my saggy pajamas pants and no bra, listening to a cockatiel demand toast of me, I caved and took the dogs out. They shot from the front door as though I’d packed them into a cannon with a steel rod. I could’ve sworn there was smoke coming off Max as he landed in the yard, never even touching the front steps on his way down.
I crossed my arms protectively over my unsupported chest, and we ambled down the sidewalk, the dogs growing calmer as we gained distance from the house. They happily wagged their stumpy tails, along with the whole back half of their muscular bodies, sniffing every fence post, shrub, and telephone pole. I counted the number of houses we passed until I could barely hear the birds any longer. Three, four, five. I heard a call that was higher and shriller than the others and wondered if that was in fact Aphrodite, louder than the rest after all. Seven, eight, nine.
Inside the house, the noise had been so frenzied and confusing it was impossible to sort one bird’s call from the next. The further away I got, the more distinct each caw and cry became. By the eleventh house, I couldn’t hear them unless I stopped walking and strained really hard. We were nearing the public park at the end of the street, so we crossed, and the dogs took off into the outfield of the baseball diamond. I hadn’t brought a ball or a toy, but I found an adequate stick and gave it a toss. They didn’t even notice I’d thrown it, even though it fell a few feet from where Sasha was bounding about. Clearly not retrievers.
Back at the house, the vizlas flopped down on the furniture. Sterling was still asking for toast. And there was still no coffee. I should have paid better attention to the implications when Bev had served me tea from her vast collection. Definitely not a coffee drinker.
From my extensive reading, I understood that each bird had a very specific diet. After putting two pieces of toast in the toaster oven—one for me, one for Sterling—I got down to sorting the requirements for each. There were apples to chop into specific sizes, supplemented by mango and papaya, as well as some broccoli and lettuce. There was an astonishing assortment of nuts to crack in varying degrees, meant to supplement each breed’s seed blend, mixed with a handful of ZuPreem fruit pellets and just a sprinkle of something called Tropimix.
I started in the back room with the two smallest birds, dumping their uneaten pellet mix and nuts and fruits and veggies into the compost bin. According to the instructions, they got no more than two cashews, a couple of peanuts, and maybe a pistachio as a treat.
Since Echo was allegedly a nipper, I was careful to get in and out of his cage quickly. Nora took her walnuts partially cracked, which she received without a peep, to my great relief. In the hallway between office and kitchen, I fed the fish first, if only to spite Sterling, who was still crowing about his toast. As a matter of principal I ate my piece first, which didn’t sit well with him at all. Even if he did say, “Please,” I wasn’t eating second to a bird.
After Aphrodite got her blend of pellets, broccoli, lettuce, and fruits, along with her peanuts (in the shell, un-cracked), I moved on to Sterling’s breakfast. He took the toast in his beak, finally shutting up and focusing instead on tearing impressively large chunks out of the buttered bread while maneuvering it with his talons. He received double the food: bowls inside the cage and on the top as well, near his exterior perch. His favorite nut was the walnut, which I lightly cracked on the butcher block with a hammer.
Krishna ate shelled peanuts, while Bonsai preferred his in the shell (“He loves a challenge!” according to his printout), so I only cracked his nuts lightly with the handle of the hammer rather than the head.
Bev had asked me to speak to the birds. This shouldn’t have felt as strange as it did, since I’d always spoken to dogs and cats—those with whom I’d grown up, cared for at the pet store, and even met on the street. I think the primary difference was that not a single one of those animals had ever spoken back to me, as Aphrodite and Sterling could. I’d never been spoken to by a bird—or any other non-human—before, and it was far more off-putting than I’d anticipated.
“All right, Bonsai,” I ventured. “Yum, yum. I like your bell!” He, unlike his more fluent friends, said nothing.
With the riotous sun salutation behind us, and the birds happily sated on their nuts and seeds and fruit, it was time to start back at the beginning with Bindi, Echo, and Nora’s cages. This time I washed and refilled their water bowls and replaced the food- and droppings-spotted newspaper lining.
I hate the feel of newspaper; I have for as long as I can remember. When I was young, recycling was my household chore (“If you’re going to be part of this family you have to contribute!” my parents said). I shuddered to handle the weeks’ worth of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, packing them in to paper bags to be placed curbside. I can only guess that my loathing of that smooth, sooty texture stemmed from the moment when, at the inquisitive age of four, I decided that I’d like to know what a cardboard box tastes like, so I licked one when no one was looking.
By the time I got to Bonsai’s cage in the front room, my hands were so covered in bird pee, guano, and wet seed that I hardly noticed the feel of the newspapers anymore. I was effectively wearing bird-shit gloves. Cleaning Bonsai’s cage was an exercise in balance, keeping all the peanut shells from tipping onto the hardwood floor. This, now that I looked more closely, might not have been such an issue after all, since there was plenty of poop splattered along the floorboards as well. I mentally added mopping to my list of morning to-dos.
After I finished with the cages and the sweeping, cleaned the kitchen of fruit rinds and shells, packed away all of the seed in the pantry, and mopped up the crusted remnants of bird droppings from the floor, I was feeling like Cinderella of the animal kingdom. Before I left Sasha and Max and their many feathered friends for the day, I went back through the binder to be extra sure I hadn’t forgotten any critical steps or instructions. The dogs could access the back patio throughout the day by going through the kitchen, under the broom, and out the dog door in the back room. Sterling was roaming free, no doubt annoying the shit out of Aphrodite. I was pretty sure I’d heard a “cabrón” out of her, directed, I assumed, at her neighbor. Bonsai tinkled merrily as he worried his peanut shells. Nora had emitted more than her share of pee-in-my-pants squawks. As long as I was back before the sun started to set, they’d be fine for the day.
Though dark wouldn’t fully descend until around eight o’clock, the birds’ second sun salutation of the day began as soon as the blindingly golden light of late afternoon started slanting through the window blinds at a certain angle. They knew collectively, instinctively, that the sun was waning and it was time to celebrate. Walking down the sidewalk from where I’d parked, I could clearly hear the jungle concert in full force. I knew from that morning that the chorus shook the house. What must the neighbors think? I had yet to encounter anyone on the sidewalk during my walks with the dogs, but I was desperately curious to see their reaction to this twice-daily assault on the ears.
Opening the screen door and then the weathered wooden front door, I could also hear the dogs’ frenzied growls and whines within. They turned tight circles in the living room while the birds made their joyful noise. With the front door open wide, Sasha and Max were out like ochre-furred bullets into the yard, turning larger and less-frenzied circles there until I opened the front gate out onto the sidewalk.
At least one of the daily walks had to be long and vigorous enough to even come close to tiring these guys out. If I did it right, we’d get back to the house as the sun set, casting long lavender shadows over the low houses of the neighborhood.
In Max and Sasha’s neighborhood, the sky was just as wide open as anywhere else in the East Bay, and I found myself standing on the sidewalk with my head thrown back, tracking jetliners as they inched across the darkening sky. I was used to the soaring trees of my Atlanta home. The dense green growth there shielded us from the Southern sun and limited our exposure to what filtered through the canopy, dappling the landscape with a shadowy, shifting light. I was already addicted to the bright, unobstructed California sunshine that drenched everything beneath the perpetually cloudless crystalline sky.
I couldn’t speak for the dogs, but I was certainly tired out after our walk. Between all of my other visits that day, I hadn’t even walked that far—maybe five miles.
Before heading upstairs for the night, I placed blankets over the cages, returning Sterling to his cage last.
“Good night,” he replied.
It was barely nine o’clock, but I was ready to crawl into bed. I only hoped Sasha would lay off the kidney shots.
I arrived at the house on my third evening of bird duty to find Bonsai’s cage spattered with red. The shells lining the bottom of the cage were flecked with white guano and the deep crimson of congealed bird blood. Sterling was perched high atop the armoire in the living room, looking like he’d swallowed a canary.
“Hello,” he called to me.
“Fuck!”
The broom was lying across the kitchen floor, presumably dislodged by one of the dogs on their way to or from the back door. I extended my arm to Sterling, who turned his head demurely away.
“I’m not asking. Come. Here. Now!” I used both hands to grab him, and he gave a squawk. Once he was locked in his cage with the broom in its right place, I opened Bonsai’s cage. He hopped nimbly up on my hand, favoring his left leg. His right leg was mangled, the blue gray of his skin torn and still bleeding. I’m not a bird expert, but I knew that birds do not have a lot of blood in their bodies to lose. At the pet store, we’d used a yellow powder to staunch the flow, in those rare instances when they had reason to bleed. This wasn’t covered in these birds’ notes, though, and I had no idea where to even start looking for a little bottle of coagulant.
I placed Bonsai back in the cage and went to the garage where the bird carriers were. Thankfully, Bev had noted this in the binder. Bonsai went into his Pet Sherpa without objection. I only dimly registered the additional damage Sterling had inflicted on the window molding during his rampage, a fresh dusting of wood shards and paint underfoot as I shuffled awkwardly out the front door and through the gate to the car, trying not to bump or jostle the unwieldy carrier too much.
I called Bev from the laminate-and-upholstered chair in the waiting room of the veterinarian’s office. Bonsai was in the back, being examined. According to Bev’s vacation itinerary, she should’ve been at her daughter’s rehearsal dinner. Ashamed at my cowardice, I was hoping against hope that I’d be able to leave a message instead of having to explain the situation to Bev in real time.
My message was brief and to the point, and I asked her to please return my call at her earliest convenience so that I could update her on Bonsai’s condition. Soon after I hung up the phone, the doctor emerged.
“He lost a lot of blood, but he’s stable. We’ve cleaned and wrapped the leg and started him on antibiotics. He’ll have to wear a collar to prevent him from interfering with the bandage.”
“A collar?”
“Yes, a cone, around his neck.”
“Ah.”
“How are you at administering oral meds to a bird?”
“Oh, I am fair to . . . ya know . . . good.” I’d never done it in my life.
“Are you ready for the bird, then?”
“Yep.” The doctor must have sensed my hesitation, though, because he demonstrated how to squirt the yellow liquid down the bird’s beak using a hand puppet as a stand-in for Bonsai.
Luckily, the vet agreed to bill Bev by mail so I didn’t have to worry about the payment. The only substantial amount of money I had to my name was the graduation gift from my parents, sitting in a no-access, high-yield CD at Bank of America. Beyond that I had about $72.
I’d seen the charges, reading the final sum upside down as I stood at the counter waiting for the vet tech to bring out the bird. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering the leg cleaning and bandaging, the collar, antibiotics, and the demonstration on the puppet, which they surely charged for, too. But I was. Shocked, even. I wondered if $1,200 was par for the course when you have exotic birds for pets. But mostly I was just relieved to not be held responsible for the balance right then. Or hopefully ever, though I had no idea how Bev might react to the news and judge my culpability in the case of Sterling versus Bonsai.
Back in his carrier, Bonsai’s cone kept scraping the top and sides of his plastic cage. His e-collar was a comically tiny version of the one that Pearl sported. I was impressed that the vet stocked cones that small, though perhaps it was about the right size for a Teacup Chihuahua or toy poodle. I had Bonsai’s meds in a white bag with instructions tucked inside, just like I’d get when I picked up a prescription at the drugstore.
Once we were home, I left Bonsai in his carrier while I scrubbed his cage clean of blood. At last, I gingerly replaced him on the lowest, most substantial limb. Though his leg was wrapped, he still had use of his claw. He was holding it suspended above the perch, tucked close to his body in a way that made him look like a sleeping flamingo, but for the absurd-looking cone around his head. He seemed to be peering at me with a look of reproach.
Since finding Bonsai in his gore-flecked cage, I’d been fighting a growing anxiety that I’d completely missed—or misheard—Bev saying that Bonsai should be left out of his cage while I was away during the day. Only now that it was too late, I heard her voice in my head saying he’d fly into the towel hutch if Sterling should get past the broom barrier.
I reread Bonsai’s write-up on the last page of the binder with some measure of dread at what I might discover. In all caps, written beneath his name and breed: OUT during the day. Idiot! In the event that Sterling slipped past his broom and attacked, Bonsai would fly to the towel hutch in the hall where he could hide from the larger, stronger bird.
I walked into the hall by the downstairs bathroom and flipped on the light. Sure enough, there was a telltale gray feather in the topmost stack of towels from the last time Bonsai had sought refuge there.
Without flight from his cage, poor Bonsai was a sitting duck. Sterling had grabbed him through the bars of the cage and pinned him there on the other side of the wire, mauling him repeatedly. Inside his cage, Bonsai wasn’t safe. He was defenseless.
And I was screwed.
“I’m sorry, little buddy,” I said to Bonsai. He continued to stare, unblinking. I walked back to Sterling’s cage, maneuvering around the broom.
“You’re an asshole.” He fluffed his feathers and said nothing. “No toast for you tomorrow.”
If there was any hint of a silver lining to Bonsai’s injury, it was that I didn’t have to shower with him. In the binder notes, I was instructed to take him into the shower with me and deflect some of the spray from the showerhead over his feathers. Far stranger than sleeping with dogs, showering with a parrot felt complicated in all sorts of stressful ways. How would I know what was enough, or too much, water? I didn’t want to inadvertently waterboard the poor thing. On a very basic level, was it weird that I felt really . . . weird about being naked in the shower with a bird? However obvious this process might have seemed to Bev, it wasn’t to me.
Now that Bonsai was coned and bandaged, I could’ve bagged his leg securely against the water and temporarily removed his cone. But, no. I’d already broken Bonsai once; I couldn’t bear to risk doing it again.
Bev called the next day as I was coming back into the house from the dogs’ morning walk. My heart was in my throat, fully expecting some combination of rage and ridicule at my stupidity. I felt certain that I’d be responsible for the bill, too, which was totally fair.
Bev was thankful for what I’d done for Bonsai and utterly unfazed by the astronomical cost of the vet bill. Even after she’d said her part, I continued to explain my logic, assuming Bonsai was safe from Sterling in his cage and never realizing that the opposite could be true. Though I had read and reread the notes, my certainty that the cage was impregnable must’ve played tricks on my eyes and caused me to elide the obvious instructions.
“Of course I understand,” she said. “Just keep Sterling and Bonsai caged until I am home.” Either Bermuda was a magically restorative and calming place, and I had it to thank for the reprieve from a $1,200 punishment, or else braless Bev of the tea and the yoga really was that Zen and benevolent.
In my great relief and infinite kindness, I relented and fed Sterling his toast after all. Even standing at attention in the kitchen between Sterling’s and Bonsai’s cages, I wasn’t taking any chances, not even allowing him to enjoy his breakfast in freedom. He took umbrage at being fed his toast while locked up, instead of on his usual cage-top perch.
“Sorry, fella,” I said as I latched his cage after refreshing his water bowl. “You brought this on yourself.”
Poor Bonsai couldn’t manage his usual feeding routine with the unwieldy cone around his neck. He maneuvered well enough to reach his pellets, water, and fruit and vegetables, but the cone prevented him from holding his peanuts close enough to his beak for gnawing in the manner he was accustomed. I fed him the nuts, stripped of their shells, and a couple pistachios as an extra treat. Sure, I’m anthropomorphizing, but his resentment felt palpable. As he snatched each nut from my outstretched hand, he stared me down with an angry glint in his black eyes.
Before I left the house, I triple-checked the locks on Sterling’s cage and left the broom in place, propped across the entrance to the kitchen. As little trust as I had in Sterling, I had even less in myself. Despite my diligent review and frequent referencing of the instructions provided, and my fastidious attention to detail when it came to feeding the birds and maintaining their cages, I’d still managed to screw up in spectacular fashion. As prepared as I’d thought I was, I wasn’t nearly prepared enough.
I couldn’t imagine that many pets would require care as involved or specific as the birds had, but that remained to be seen. In any case, the stakes would always be just as high. I sincerely hoped that even more careful review of my every action—and fewer easily enraged animals—might result in less violent sleepovers in the future.
Upon her return, Bev gifted me with a book on herbal medicine. So kind, and so very random. I secretly hoped that I might find the secret to Bev’s outrageous magnanimity revealed within its pages.
After depositing my check, I updated my business profile on the pet-sitting association’s website. Experience with exotic animals: check! Though there wasn’t a field for it, I was mentally noting that I now had bona fide experience with animal-on-animal aggression, too.
Little did I know how indispensable this skill of managing the wilder and less-predictable aspects of the menagerie in my charge would prove. I’d leaped enthusiastically into the pet-care industry for the serenity, the simple joy, of spending my days in the company of animals. But my job, it would seem, was more about maintaining the illusion of control.