One of Our Many Houses…
When I was 15 we lived in a quaint, old, two-story house with great personality. The downstairs rooms were large and spacious with windows in every wall. There was a welcoming front porch and a large covered back porch. Since this house was built well before air conditioning, strategically placed windows were on every available wall, opened, and breezes flowed throughout. And the big covered back porch meant windows could stay open, even when it rained. However, it obviously wasn’t completely foolproof, as evidenced one weekend by the insistent complaining of a visiting bird friend.
Charlie…
Our neighbors owned a fat, black Mynah bird named Charlie. He actually belonged to the neighbor man’s dad, who lived with them, and he and Charlie had been together a long time. Over the years, the old man had taught Charlie to whistle a tune, sing and talk. We would beg to visit the neighbor, to knock on the door, just to hear Charlie call out, “Hello, who’s there? Come on in!” Then when you walked in, he would make a little smooching sound, “Come ‘ere, Baby, give me a kiss!” Charlie could also wolf whistle; long, slow and loud, whenever prompted by the old man. He would say he had great fun with that, chasing off the Avon lady.
We baby…I mean bird sit….
The neighbor’s were going out of town for the weekend and the old gentleman offered to pay us kids to bird sit Charlie while he was gone. Mom agreed to let us, against her better judgement I’m sure, but she figured, as she told me many years later, “How much trouble can you get into with a bird in a cage?”
Not being nearly as impressed with Charlie’s “racket” as we were, Mom relegated him to the table on the back porch for the duration of his visit. We set him up with food and water and settled in for an exciting weekend. We soon realized that, as fun as Charlie was, he wasn’t 24 hour entertainment. Turns out he liked to sit and sleep for hours, sit and eat, sit and poop, or just sit and stare into space. So being kids, and unlike Charlie, we couldn’t sit and do anything for too long, so off we went in search of other entertainment. But we would regularly pop (literally and noisily) back onto the porch for frequent Charlie checks, usually spooking him thoroughly, resulting in heavy wing flapping and squawking, much to our delight.
And then the rain came…
That afternoon a summer rainstorm rolled in and forced us indoors. No one worried about Charlie, as he was high and dry on the porch. Or so we thought. In a few minutes, however, we heard Charlie squawk and jabber. He continued to repeat his little tirade several times until we finally went to check on him. It turned out he wasn’t as dry as we thought. His cage was a little too far out on the table and with each little gust of wind, rain would blow in on him as he sit on his perch. Just as we stepped out the back door, a new gust blew fresh raindrops onto his already dripping tail feathers. He looked straight at us, calmly cocked his head, gave us the one-eyed once over and proclaimed in high-pitch bird voice, “Oops, got my tail wet!” We died laughing! Even Mom cracked up. To this day, I don’t know how the old man taught Charlie that trick, but it remains one of my favorite animal memories!
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