Bebop (and Bluey)

Sooner or later I had to tell you about Bebop and Bluey. 

The two very noisy extraordinary parakeets I once lived with (not in their cage, they were in my cage...errr, apartment).

Bebop (the yellow one) arrived in my life through a fateful encounter. She flew into the window of the office where I worked. It wasn't an open window. It was a NYC office building. I think the 6th floor. Actually the ASCAP building across from Lincoln Center, but I didn't work for ASCAP. I worked for CTW (another acronym, this one for Children's Television Workshop). Which was a great job (I know I digress) but my greatest memory was when we'd go out the building's side door to have lunch at the Ginger Man. Almost always ordering their signature Caesar salad -- a mound of romaine lettuce on a dinner plate -- and a glass of white wine. Yes, those were the wine lunch days. Hey, it was TV.

So Bebop (not named yet) flew into the plate glass window, knocked herself out, and landed on the outside concrete sill.

I forget in whose office, but we all ran in to see the little fainted (dead?) bird on the sill. Someone opened the window and picked her up. 

She came to, frozen with fright. 

We found her a cardboard box to hang out in, gave her some water, and I think, lettuce, and there she stayed until Friday rolled around. Now what? Someone had to take her home.

Me, I never had pets on my own. I grew up with a series of dogs (Bob being the knock-out best-- his ear-in-his-mouth hijinks are bound to end up in story here someday). But my little one room apartment on the fifth floor of a Third Avenue tenement had not been blessed with pets (except for the occasional unwanted mouse or water bug).

And I'm a flying fan. My Dad used to take us to the airport just to watch planes take off and land. I took my first pilot's lesson at the controls of a 2-seat Cesna and was (literally) in heaven. I'd been known to ogle house sparrows in Central Park. A red cardinal out the back window, through my security gates, in the winter white snow, could keep my attention for hours.

I said: "I'll take her home."

I took a taxi with the cardboard box and the bird inside. Then left her alone in the apartment to go buy a cage, food, and a book: How To Care for Parakeets.

The first few days were edgy. I got her in the cage, but she sat on one of the bars and didn't move. Didn't eat. Didn't drink from the little water cup. Was she sick? Still stunned from her head smashing into the window? I realized later (when I got to know her personality) that she was just scared. She warmed up to her new environment and was soon eating, drinking, and yes, chirping. 

I called her Bebop since my musical psyche was steeped in Charlie Parker and my literary psyche was steeped in Jack Kerouac. (Salt Peanuts!! Salt Peanuts!!) 

She took to the name rather well. Her chirping became stereophonic, LOUD, and filled that little 8 x 10 of an apartment with surround sound. She was only silent when she was voraciously eating, or when I put a cloth over the cage. That made it night time -- even if it wasn't -- and that apparently meant time to sleep.

The other time she was kinda quiet was when I opened the cage door and encouraged her to fly around the room. She didn't always want to, but when she did she quickly made it to the far wall and smashed into it. She'd land on the floor, probably stunned, and just stand there. Until she took off again smashing into the other wall. Stun, fly, land, repeat.

There used to be a Woolworth's a couple of blocks away. They had several cages filled with parakeets (plus those red-eared turtles sold with plastic dishes with standing plastic palm trees). I used to visit the parakeet department and watch them all twitter. One day I decided Bebop might like a friend. She had taken to pecking at herself in her little mirror. Did she think it was another bird?

So I got a blue one, and called him Bluey.

I brought him home and put him in the cage. He seemed happy enough. Flitting around. Eating the food, drinking the water, glancing over at Bebop, hopefully recognizing his own species. 

But Bebop went into her close-down routine. She perched on a bar and didn't move, eat or drink for days. 

Eventually, and very sloooooowly, she came around. Bebop and Bluey got pretty friendly. They sang their hearts out all day long. When I opened the cage to let them fly, Bluey was an expert flyer. He circled the room and landed on the highest places: shelves, cabinets, open closet doors. Bebop continued to smash into a wall and end up on the floor, her perching feet looking silly flat on the wood.

And then? Well, years later the two sweethearts (yeah, they became sweethearts) went the way of all pets we outlive. And love still. Close encounters with that other world, which is really our own world (if we'd own up to it), remind us of that part of ourselves that once was out there, too. Flying in the wild until we hit that hard closed window called civilized life.  

Feathered Beast

I love this theory: birds are descendants of dinosaurs.

Isn't that the coolest thing you ever heard?

And they have proof, too. Dinosaur fossil remains with feathers. It's like a missing link in the bird world. The transvestite of animals.

But the conundrum that always gets caught in my brain is this: if the dinosaurs vanished from the planet due to some planetary catastrophe, then how could the birds descend from them?

Wooo...brain teaser!

Well, paleontologists do answer that question. I once asked Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York that very question. And the answer was: obviously not all of them became extinct. Norell's fossil discoveries keep mounting the evidence for dinosaur-as-bird theories.

I'm all for it. Anything to give birds more june nest cest quoi is okay in my book. Adds to their mystique as we watch them float on airwaves. Now who else can do that?

These photos of flying birds are by photog/artist Rosalie Winard. She calls them Avian Primitives. And they do evoke that early planetary atmosphere of wildlife free from human meddling. (Okay, we're not just meddlers, but we do meddle.)

The other photo is the missing link Archaeopteryx. It's the fossil thing with feathers. Ahhh....feathers. Don't you wish you had some? I do. A kind of soft coat of arms. Something to flutter. Something to fly on. 

Ever see birds clean their feathers? They slide their beak down the feather shaft from close to their bodies to the tip of the feather. Especially after a splash in a puddle. Or a dirt bath. 

Ingenious: dirt baths. An oxymoron with a whole lot of sense.

The Magic Box

Did you ever stand in an elevator with a dog on a leash? 

Dogs who live in apartment buildings are used to riding in elevators. They don't try to get out. They don't look around at the space they're in. They don't make eye contact with the humans present. They usually face the door. Their heads bowed, their eyes raised to the edge where the door cracks open. Waiting for that moment when they can leave this little room. For when the powers that be (probably humans) will open the door and they can resume normal life. They can go out walking in the world.

"They think it's a magic box," says Lyna, who walks dogs in NYC. "If I pick up two dogs in the same building on different floors, they don't always know which floor is theirs. The hallways look alike. And even the smells are so multi-layered one floor smells like the next. So as soon as the elevator door opens, out they go. They assume they're home."

They just think about leaving. They're not even doing their sniffing-everything-in-sight routine. Not the floor full of soles-on-street smells or the new humans standing around.

"Tootsie puts her nose near the opening and feels the bit of air coming through," says Gerry & Richard, who live with Tootsie, the dog. That's Tootsie in the picture up there.

Well, Tootsie is that kind of dog that goes the extra mile in dogdom. What she does, not every dog does. But she will just hang her head waiting like it's some kind of penance or prayer.

All the elevator dogs wait for release. Maybe they've figured if you stand still and be good you'll be freed from this tiny spot.

Do they know the room moves? How do they "rationalize" that sinking feeling. Or that rising feeling. That unnatural play with gravity. What do they think is going on? Do they behave so docile and penitent because they know they're engaged with some inexplicable supernatural force? That they must cower from. Pretend they're not there. Work at escaping notice. So that this unleashed power will leave them be?

When the elevator lands and solid gravity regains its normal personality, the door opens.

The dogs can breathe free. Go back to the business of being a dog. Head high, nose engaged, curiosity spilling all over the place.