as small as a world and as large as alone, matchbook-stories: Once upon a time, I made...

4:56am November 7, 2013

Once upon a time, I made friends with a bird.

I was interning at a zoo which will not be named, and he was a black-throated magpie jay, or a collie’s jay. He’d been moved to a holding area which was not an ideal situation for him—in preparation for heading to another zoo where he could have an exhibit better suited for him, and also so that an elderly hawk could move inside, into his old enclosure.

Being a jay, he needed a lot of stimulation, so I made him enrichments whenever I had time. I froze his favorite treats in ice, and made him “surprise balls” (newspaper balls with worms inside), gave him boxes with crickets in, all sorts of stuff.

And I talked to him, a lot. It took me at least an hour to clean the holding area every morning, and more than half of it was spent in the room where he was housed, so I’d chat with him. Mostly he’d scold and bark back at me, but he did listen, and he was always watching for his turn to get his breakfast.

Now, birds can be kind of delicate animals, and to avoid contamination, birds that eat meat get fed after birds that eat only fruit and seeds. This jay had meat in his diet. So when he got moved between two doves, those birds got fed before he did. And he knew. He knew I’d “skipped” him, and he was upset. He scolded and scolded.

And over time we got to know each other. And then one morning, he jumped to the front of the cage, and raised this crest of feathers on his forehead, and he started to sing. An immensely varied song—this bird could split your eardrums with his scolding, but his song was a surprisingly soft, musical whistle, interspersed with clicks, and clucks, and meows.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but pretty soon it became clear that we were friends. When I was across the hall, I could hear him scolding through the door because he heard me coming in but I hadn’t visited him and said hello yet. And he’d sing to me for a good two minutes at a time, sometimes two or three times in a morning.

And that was the first time I really got it. I’ve always liked animals but that was the first time I really felt connected to a non-domesticated animal. An animal that didn’t have to like people (although I’m sure it helped that I fed him), that wasn’t bred specifically to live side by side with us. And not imprinted, either.

We had a dialogue, a conversation. We were friends.

I still miss him very much.

(I hope that was an ok story)