Joey the Budgerigar
Joey the budgerigar sat on the top of the open window and looked out into the sunshine. Behind him an anxious human voice told him to sit perfectly still but in front of him a stronger voice coaxed him out into a world he had never known.
‘Joey, good boy, there’s a good boy,’ said the human voice. ‘Sit still for mummy.’
‘Joey, come on,’ said the voice inside his head. ‘Fly away.’
The warm sun shone on his soft blue chest. The air smelt sweet and thick with the flowers of summer. Behind him the frightened voice of the woman who had loved him for as long as he could remember, talked softly to him. There were tears in her voice but the call of freedom was too strong to resist and Joey threw himself into the garden. He fluttered down towards the lawn but before he reached it he flapped his wings and soared up into the open sky.
Higher and higher he flew, a bright blue flash against a bright blue sky, until his wings ached like they had never ached before. Once a week he had flown round the room while his owner had cleaned his cage. Once a week he had flapped from the chair to the curtains, from the curtains to the sideboard and then back to his cage. Apart from attacking his reflection in his mirror that was all the exercise he had ever had. And now there were no bars any more. Now he was free.
He looked down at the house he had escaped from. In the back garden the woman who had kept him imprisoned all those years was running round her garden calling his name. Joey flew down into the top of a tall tree in the next garden and rested. Everywhere was so big that he couldn’t take it all in. As far as he could see in any direction there was more and more to look at. It just seemed to go on forever with no walls or doors or windows anywhere.
I wonder where they hang their pictures, he thought.
‘Hello, Joey,’ he said. ‘Who’s a pretty boy?’
Below him in the wild garden some sparrows were hopping about in the grass pecking up seeds so Joey flew down to see them. At first they took no notice of him but after he’d asked them who was a pretty boy for the fiftieth time they could ignore him no longer.
‘Well, not you,’ said one of the sparrows.
‘Yes,’ said another. ‘Who ever heard of a bird that was coloured blue?’
‘What?’ said Joey. ‘Hello, Joey. Who’s a pretty boy?’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ said the first sparrow. ‘Is he a bit simple?’
‘Joey’s a clever boy,’ said Joey.
‘Maybe he fell in a tin of blue paint and swallowed some,’ said a third sparrow.
‘Hello, Joey,’ said the poor confused budgie. ‘Someone at the door, someone at the door.’
‘I think we should attack him,’ said one of the sparrows. ‘That’s what sparrows do to strange birds, isn’t it?’
‘Only if they’re smaller than us,’ said the first sparrow. ‘I’m not going near him, not with that beak.’
‘Time for Joey’s bath. Joey’s a clever boy,’ said Joey and jumped into Rosie the dog’s water bowl. This wouldn’t have been too bad except that Rosie was asleep in the grass right next to her water bowl and Joey’s vigorous splashing soon woke her up. The sparrows flew off to the bottom of the garden as Rosie stood up and shook herself.
‘Hello, Joey,’ said the wet budgie, hopping out of the water.
Rosie leant forward and sniffed Joey. He was the most beautiful bird she had ever seen, as blue as the sky, just like a dream.
‘Woof, woof,’ said Joey.
‘What?’ said Rosie.
‘Sorry,’ said Joey, ‘it’s a habit. I imitate everyone.’
‘Gosh, that’s clever,’ said Rosie. ‘Who were you doing then?’
‘When?’
‘When you said woof, woof?’ said Rosie.
‘You,’ said Joey. ‘Joey’s a clever boy. Time for Joey’s bath.’
‘Woof, woof?’ said Rosie. ‘I don’t say woof, woof.’
Joey explained that was how dogs sounded to humans.
‘No, no,’ said Rosie, ‘that’s wrong. That’s how humans sound to dogs.’
‘No, you’ve got it the wrong way round,’ said Joey. ‘Humans say tweet, tweet all the time.’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ said Rosie.
Just then Joey’s human put her head over the fence and pleaded softly and gently with him.
‘Come to mummy, there’s a good boy,’ she said. ‘Come to mummy.’
‘See,’ said Joey. ‘I told you they say tweet, tweet, tweet.’
‘That one didn’t,’ said Rosie. ‘She just said woof, woof, woof.’
As soon as Rosie spoke, Joey’s human jumped up and down behind the fence and waved her hands around.
‘Help, help,’ she screamed. ‘That awful dog’s going to eat my baby.’
‘Tweet, tweet,’ shouted Joey and flew into the bushes.
‘Woof, woof,’ shouted Rosie and ran after her.
‘Oh, my precious baby,’ cried Joey’s human and ran off into her house.
‘Who on earth’s that awful woman?’ said Rosie. ‘She whinges a lot, doesn’t she?’
‘She used to keep me inside her house, locked up in a tiny cage,’ said Joey.
‘That’s awful,’ said Rosie. ‘Nobody should be locked up.’
‘I know,’ said Joey. ‘I used to sit at the bars and look out into the garden and feel so lonely.’
‘Well, you don’t have to be lonely now,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ll be your friend.’
‘Woof, woof,’ said Joey.
‘Tweet, tweet,’ said Rosie.
‘Still, it wasn’t all bad,’ said Joey. ‘I had a lovely mirror.’
The back door of the house opened and the two children and Joey’s owner came rushing out. They ran around the lawn looking into the bushes and up through the branches. Rosie ran out into the open to distract them while Joey flew down and hid in the thick brambles by the canal.
‘Oh, oh,’ Joey’s owner cried. ‘Your horrible little dog’s eaten my beautiful baby.’
Joey heard her and flew back across the lawn in case her new friend got into trouble. He flew up and landed on the gutter and looked down at them.
‘Who’s a pretty boy?’ he called out, just in case they hadn’t seen him.
‘There he is,’ shouted the children.
‘Joey’s a clever boy,’ said Joey.
‘Joey, come to mummy, there’s a good boy,’ she said. ‘Come to mummy.’
The children tried to hide their grinning faces from the woman. She sounded so stupid and they felt quite sorry for Joey. Rosie ran round and round barking and jumping in the air. The children’s mother came out but she had no more sympathy for the woman than her children. Everyone at the house called fourteen was definitely on Joey’s side. They didn’t like animals being locked up and they weren’t going to change their minds for Joey’s owner.
‘You just go home,’ said the children’s mother, ‘and we’ll see if we can lure him into the house with a nice bit of cuttlefish.’
‘Cuttlefish, I’m sick to death of cuttlefish,’ said Joey when he saw it sitting on the kitchen window sill. ‘Who ever got the idea that budgerigars like cuttlefish? What do they think we do, deep-sea dive for it, swim under water with a sharp knife and kill squid?’
‘Yeah,’ said Rosie. ‘Quite right. What’s a cuttlefish?’
Joey spent the rest of the afternoon flying around the garden eating things. After a lifetime of eating the same old boring bird seed every single day, it was like being in a giant supermarket. There was so much to choose from. At first he followed the other birds and ate what they were eating. While it meant eating grass seeds and peanuts in the bird feeder, it was all right, everything tasted wonderful, fresh and exciting. When it meant poking about in the grass for slugs, he wasn’t quite so sure about it. His beak was the wrong shape and all he got was mouthfuls of mud. When he finally did manage to eat a slug, he decided the mud was better. It took a lot of drinking and spitting in the pond to get rid of the awful slimy taste.
He drove all the other birds mad with his endless chattering. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, it was more that he kept saying the same thing over and over again. By the end of the day every single animal in the garden knew that he was a pretty boy, he was a clever boy and that there was someone at the door.
‘I don’t care how dangerous his beak looks,’ said one of the sparrows. ‘If he tells me once more what a pretty boy he is, I’ll kill him.’
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘He’s driving me mad.’
‘Maybe we could get the cuckoos to have a go at him,’ said a third.
‘No, they like him,’ said the first sparrow. ‘Every time they go near him, he just imitates them.’
As dusk fell all the animals began to go to their beds. Rosie went indoors for her supper and then curled up on someone’s lap. The sparrows that weren’t sitting on eggs perched on branches next to their nests and one by one most of the other birds settled down for the night. A family of swans out on the canal floated slowly through the water, their long necks curved gracefully round as they tucked their heads back under their wings and slept. Only the owls were different. For them it was time to wake up. Other animals were beginning their days too. The rabbits came to the mouths of their burrows and sniffed the air, while the hedgehogs scrambled out from under the shed and began to crash about through the long grass. Everyone had somewhere to go. Everyone, that is, except Joey.
Joey had never really seen the night before. Sometimes when his owner had forgotten to close the curtains he’d sat in his cage and looked out at the darkening sky, but there had always been a light on in the room. Outside the window had just been like looking at a painting. Now he was inside that painting and he didn’t know what to do. It was getting cold too and that was something Joey had never felt before.
As the sun set, the shape of the trees grew sharp against the dark gold sky. The leaves and branches changed from green and brown to deep black and Joey felt his beak begin to chatter. He fluffed up his feathers and flew from branch to branch but no one wanted him. Everyone had their place and Joey’s place was next door in a chromium cage.
‘Go away,’ said the sparrows.
‘There’s no room here,’ said the blackbirds.
‘This is private property,’ said the robin.
‘Ooh, breakfast,’ said Dennis the owl. ‘I’ve never had blue breakfast before.’
The sky grew darker until the only light was the warm gold glow from the house windows. Great dark clouds rolled across the sky covering the moon and stars. Joey flew down onto the lawn and stood in the pool of light from the French windows. And as he stood there it began to rain.
‘Not time for Joey’s bath,’ he said as the cold water soaked through to his skin.
‘You look wet,’ said a terrifying round prickly thing. It was Barry the hedgehog. Joey had never seen a hedgehog and thought Barry was the weirdest looking creature he’d ever seen.
‘Are you a nightmare?’ he said, shivering with cold and fear.
‘No, of course not,’ said Barry. ‘I’m a hedgehog and if you stand out here in the pouring rain, you’ll either die of cold or the owls will get you.’
‘I’ve got nowhere to go,’ said Joey. ‘Everyone keeps chasing me away.’
‘Follow me,’ said Barry. ‘I know someone who’ll look after you.’
Barry walked across the lawn towards the bottom of the garden and Joey walked slowly after him. The hedgehog had to keep waiting for the wet budgerigar to catch up because the bird could hardly see in the darkness. When they reached the chicken hut, Barry went inside and across to Ethel’s nest. The old chicken was sitting fluffed up staring into the darkness.
‘I just don’t seem to be able to get to sleep any more,’ she said.
Barry told her what had happened and Ethel was only too happy to help.
‘I’ve sat on all sorts of things in my time,’ she said, ‘but never a blue bird.’
Joey hopped up into Ethel’s nesting box and the old chicken tucked him under her wing. He told her everything that had happened since his escape that morning, how wonderful it had felt to be free, but how it had all changed when night had fallen.
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Ethel, ‘is why you want to be free. I certainly don’t.’
‘But you are free,’ said Joey. ‘You can go wherever you like and you can do whatever you feel like doing.’
‘But I don’t,’ said Ethel, ‘and I don’t want to. I want to belong to someone. I like knowing that there are people who will look after me.’ And she told Joey about the time when the house had been deserted and how lonely she had felt.
‘I mean, everyone’s nice to you, aren’t they?’ she said.
‘Oh yes,’ said Joey, ‘I get food and water every day and I’ve got a lovely mirror with another budgie in it just like me and when I sing to him, he sings to me.’
‘Well then,’ said Ethel.
‘Yes, but I’m not free,’ said Joey.
‘To do what?’ said Ethel. ‘Get soaked through and eaten by owls?’
‘Yes,’ said Joey. ‘Well, err, no.’
They talked on and on until the morning and Joey knew, as he had done from the start really, that being free was as much about how you felt inside your head as it was about flying through the trees. Like the swans belonged on the river and the sparrows belonged in the trees, so Joey knew that he belonged next door in a shiny silver cage with a beautiful mirror and a lovely piece of cuttlefish. He’d been in the trees. He’d had a wonderful adventure but now it was time to go home.
He flew out of the chicken hut up into the sky as far as he could go. The world was waking up and the air was still cold with the chill of night. Down below he could see his home and it looked safe and inviting. He wanted to say goodbye to Rosie but there was no sign of her as he flew down into the trees in the wild garden.
The window next door was open, the window he had flown out of the day before.
‘Joey, come on,’ said a voice inside his head. ‘Come home.’