Tweets Of A Different Feather
Hello and welcome to the world of The BlogAdda Weekly, a place where fiction, fact and fantasy mix to give you just the right amount of excitement to get you over Hump Day. Right now, we’re looking at the world through pet coloured glasses. We saw a day in Lilo the doggy’s life, and met Ariel of the water world. And today, we change gears and species both, as we take a look at a feathered friend that makes our day brighter with its presence and its voice and its antics.
Squawk! The sun is in my eyes! Sigh, I guess it’s time to wake up. I blink my eyes and ruffle my feathers. The house is cold because of the beastly whirring machine on the wall that throws cold air at me. The house is silent, so looks like no one is up. I hop down to my water bowl and glug down some water, like my companion Meera does when she wakes up. She will up pretty soon, I can hear her stopping the ringing of her alarm. Why does she do that, I will never understand. I can wake her up every morning instead of that clock that she keeps hitting every morning. On second thoughts, I prefer not getting hit first thing in the morning, so I’ll pass.
Meera wakes up finally and sits on her bed with her hair sticking up in all directions like my feathers sometimes, and it always amuses me. I think that she needs to warm up like we need to in winter, soaking up some heat before feeling alive and active. She stretches and then comes straight to me.
“Good morning Pepper!”, she croons at me, petting my green head and running her finger over the red ring around my neck. “Good morning, Meera”, I reply. That’s right, Meera has taught me well, and I like to think of myself as a well brought up parrot lady. I nuzzle into her hands and click my beak, and she hands me something that makes my as bright as an emerald! A fresh chilli! I hold the chilli and take a bite to reach at the best part – the seeds. As I get started with the chilli, Meera laughs and goes about getting ready for the day.
Once my breakfast of chilli and birdseed is done, I look out the window from my perch and see the trees swaying in the breeze, different birds coming up to the trees and then taking off in the skies again. I wonder what that would feel like, flying high in the sky, exploring the world from above, eating fresh fruit dangling from the trees and resting in a leafy abode. This is the life that God designed us birds for!
Meera pulls out the chair from her work desk, and my chain of thoughts is broken. As I look at my companion Meera, I’m happy that I got to live a life different than other birds. I feel like I’m the chosen one! There is a house nearby from where I hear some birds calling, but their human companions leave in the morning and come in the evening, and the whole day the birds keep calling out to their friends in the trees. I’m happy that Meera doesn’t abandon me like that, as she does something with colours and paper in the house itself. I also fly to where she is sitting and give her company sometimes, when I get tired of sitting on my perch, like I do now.
Meera starts working with her colours and the long stick she uses to put them on a white thing. I cock my head this way and that, but don’t understand what she is trying to make. Whatever it is, it looks beautiful, and I sit down and preen my feathers as she does her work.
One of my old feathers goes flying and sticks to the paint on the white thing, and I hear Meera shriek like one of my own species! I feel that her squawk is very funny, but she hastily removes the feather and asks me to go back to my place. I fly away and sit on my perch.
Yaaaaaawn! I’m bored now. I’ve exercised my neck by rotating it round and round for a while, and done my acrobatics by standing on one leg and dangling off the perch till Meera laughs. She gets up and refills my food bowl with some fresh fruit, birdseed and a sweet piece of bread. Yayy! My favourites! Are you surprised? You thought I just eat boring seeds? I love bread, rice and the occasional noodles! I’m a city bred parrot you know! “Thank you!” I say to Meera, feeling genuinely grateful.
Lunch done, I watch Meera also take a break and eat, and feel sleep creeping over my eyes. I tuck my beak into my back (yep, we can do that, and it’s strangely comfortable) and drift off to sleep.
As I dream, instead of the dreams of flying that I usually get, I go back into my childhood. I remember sitting in the tree that I can still see outside the window, and I remember Mom feeding me and my siblings when we were young and featherless. I remember feeling happy and warm in our home, going off to sleep surrounded by the whole family. I remember the windy day, when I was playing with my siblings in our home when Mom-Dad were not home and went too far, near the door of our home. I lost my balance and fell from our home, crashing through the branches and leaves that were once my safe haven. With a huge thud, I landed on the ground, and felt my right wing hurt terribly. I started crying and calling my parents, but there were far away and couldn’t hear me.
Oh god! There are big people walking all around me. There are gigantic, noisy and hot machines moving very close to me! I tried to scuttle away on my legs, but the pain was too much. Is that my parents I hear? Thank God! They flew near me and tried to pick me up, but I was too wobbly and heavy for both of them. They also tried to keep people away from me, but it was fast becoming dark and they couldn’t help me. Finally, they heard my siblings crying out of hunger and left me to feed them.
I lay on the ground panting, thinking about how this was my end and I would die without ever experiencing the feeling of flying. That’s when I heard a loud gasp, and saw Meera for the first time. She removed a piece of cloth from around her neck, and scooped me up in it, covering my shivering body with it. I thought she was going to harm me, as Mom-Dad had warned us to stay away from human people. Not that I was in any position to defend myself. So I lay silently and accepted my fate.
Meera took me to her warm, big nest and lay me down. She then started talking to someone on a small square, black thing that made noises, but I couldn’t hear anything from the other side. Finally she came back to me, and gave me some soft, warm sludge to eat with a pointy beak like thing. Hungry since morning, I greedily ate the whole thing. “You brave little thing”, I heard her murmur.
The next morning, a big, serious looking person came to me with Meera, and prodded and poked at me. Squaaaaaawk! I let out a loud shrill as he touched my right wing, and tried to nip him with my beak. Sadly, that didn’t scare him off, and he tied my hurting right wing with something hard, until I couldn’t move.
Meera kept feeding me the warm sludge 4 times a day, and I could feel my strength returning. One day I woke up, and I saw tiny little feathers on my body! I was so happy that I started singing! When I was felt better, I thought I should fly and surprise my parents and my siblings, but Meera didn’t let me leave. The big serious man who tied my wing told Meera that my right wing will never heal enough for me to fly too high and save myself from crows and other birds that hurt my kind.
That’s when Meera started to make a nest for me in the house. She made me a perch, brought me food bowls and toys and taught me words in her language. I remember that she had brought me a cage first, and how I was soooooooo angry that I screeched at her non stop, trying to bite the bars to escape!
That memory makes me so agitated that I’m woken up from my nap. I wake up and fluff my body up in anger, and I can feel my pupils contracting. Meera notices this, and comes up to me and coos at me till I calm down. Getting angry has it’s own benefits, as she gives me a sip of the delicious pomegranate juice that she’s drinking, and the red juice melts away my red hot leftover anger.
So this is my life now. It’s been a year since I started living with Meera. I sometimes peek out of the window and see my family flying around or resting on the branches near our home, and I call out to them in a fit of homesickness. They answer back, but are unable to locate where I am, and give up. I do miss them, and I wonder if they miss me too, but I’m happy that my life didn’t end on the road and I get to fly around in the house at least. Best of both worlds, right? I fly to the outside room, where Meera has used her colours and painted a parrot that looks just like me, which I love looking at. Who says family needs to be of the same blood, or the same species even?
How did you like this week’s The BlogAdda Weekly? If you ever had a pet, we would love to hear your experience in the comments section below! And don’t forget to come back next week for the last part!