Mother spent many
years trying to socialize the masculine fruit of her womb; giving to two
scrapping boys the gift of the graces that never manifested in their boorish
absent father, possibly foreseeing a disastrous demise for her progeny should
they follow in the bastard's footsteps. The first attempt came in the guise of
a pet bird, a green and yellow ball of feathers flitting around in a white
enameled cage of no real aesthetic consequence, connected to the ground by a white
enameled cast iron stand.
"What
shall we name him?"
"Tweety!"
we chimed.
"Hardly
a unique nomenclature from such intelligently creative young men." she
scowled; we were four and three years of age, I being the eldest.
Our
shoulders slumped forward.
"I
think we should name him Perky, he does have that air of infinite energy about
him." Our heads drooped even further.
"Right,
so we're in agreement, Perky it is. Michael", looking towards my brother,
"you feed and water as needed."
Placing her hand
on my head and moving it so that her serious gaze met my eyes, "You have
the most important job of all, changing the paper at the bottom of the cage
daily, so that the house does not begin to smell like a nasty aviary."
Nodding in the affirmative
she continued, “You do understand me, correct?” I nodded in agreement; though I
wasn't completely convinced I understood her reference, since I had never been
acquainted with word aviary or the smell of unkempt chickens.
****
Canaries were first bred in captivity in the 17th century. They were
brought over by Spanish sailors to Europe. This bird became expensive and fashionable
to breeding in courts of Spanish and English kings. Monks started breeding
them and only sold the males (which sing). This kept the birds in short supply
and drove the price up.
****
Following
in my father's flighty footsteps, Perky One, made his escape the second time I
cleaned the cage; less emotion emanated from the keeper than from the giver of
this gift. My brother also sought to escape our less than harmonious life
before reaching puberty, once through childhood pneumonia at age two and
then by catching spinal meningitis at the age of six.
Perky
Two came and went with minimal fanfare, meeting its demise at the hands of a
ghostly figure, who I later suspected was one of my mother’s many gentlemen
callers suffering from the consequences of a long evening of alcohol fueled revelry and was not very appreciative of the morning thrushes and twittering.
****
Canaries were iconically used in coal
mines to detect the
presence of carbon monoxide. The bird's rapid breathing rate, small size, and high
metabolism, compared to the miners, led birds in dangerous mines to succumb
before the miners, thereby giving them time to take action. The use of
miners' canaries in British mines was phased out in 1987, how unfortunate that
such a joyful thrush should endure such a horrible life condition.
****
Perkys Three and
Four seemed to have fared better during their stay, though I am not sure it was
a consequence of our more diligent efforts or the fact they were given away to
lonely old church ladies that lived in the various apartment complexes we found
ourselves in as mother migrated us from one hamlet to another in her effort the
bring meaningful change to her life. Nonetheless they were better off and at times I
wished I had been in that cage with them. My mother's adventure found us at a rather conservative congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, whose ideas of biblical discipline led to my mother's more draconian methods of correction.
****
Canaries have been extensively used in research to study neurogenesis,
or the birth of new neurons in the adult brain, and also for basic research in
order to understand how songbirds encode and produce song. Thus, canaries have
served as model species for discovering how the vertebrate brain learns,
consolidates memories, and recalls coordinated motor movements. Fernando
Nottebohm, a professor at the Rockefeller University in New York
City, New York, detailed the brain structures and pathways that are involved in
the production of bird song.
****
Perky Five was the
final effigy of my mother's experiment in male socialization before she gave us
up to the teenage bacchanalian gods of post pubescent adolescents. Through her new faith, she came into possession of a new husband, the father of my sister and the
daughter that she always wished she had given birth to first. At age thirteen
when my sister and Perky 5 made their entrance into my life, the promise of a
male figure that would lead me into adult life was in the guise of a twenty-two
year old surfer with a mean streak as long as the Jeffrey’s Bay break. Now I
not only had the responsibility of keeping a feathered beast safe, I became the live in babysitter for my mother's latest offspring and the greater part of
my teenage years were defined by these constraints.
****
Canaries have been depicted in cartoons from the mid-20th century as being
harassed by domestic cats; the most famous cartoon canary is Warner
Brothers' "Tweety
Bird", who always
seemed to get the better of Sylvester, despite this tormentor being of a greater size and much more devious intent.
****
Perky Five found
the simplest means to end his pain by starting a fight with himself in the tile
mirrored living room. For months I suspected that he was suffering from some severe mental
distress, somewhat akin to my own, but for him it was the apparition that lay in the depths of the gold veined and smoked glass that represented my mother's eccentric view of
the world. This reflection of his trapped self, the lack of culturally significant interaction and the lack of peers equal to himself in song and heart, helped to fuel a madness, much like that experienced by a pubescent boy without direction that could relieve the angst caused by buckets of hormones coursing through his veins. Daily, at each dawn, my mother would pull the sleeping covers off his cage and there the scoundrel would be, without tongue or heart, signalling the willingness to do battle over the territory of a prison made from wire. Daily my mother would send me out into a world where I would have to "Suck it up!" as my stepfather would put it whilst racing to and from school, with a pack of witless teens in pursuit, all bent upon my early demise. Perky Five found a much more self-destructive end his torment, though in a way that would be much quicker and painless than mine. As usual, I moved his cage to a space far from his antagonist and removed its bottom in order to clean it. However, this time Perky Five chose not to remain resting on his perch, but instead dropped through the bottom and
flew like a crazed mallard, not for the open door, but for the mirrored wraith that
was his nemesis. A thud, a puff of feathers and a disturbingly comical moment later, Perky
laid at the base of the wall, no sign of life emanating from his colorful form.
I gathered him up in my palms, placed him in a small wooden box; a trifle of my
stepfather's attempt at woodworking, and buried him in the backyard along with my juvenile sense of fairplay. The pain from the beating I received from
my stepdad outlasted the pain I felt for the demise of my pet or the pain that the vicious packs of rabid teen hooligans endured at my hands from that day forward.
****
Norwich
City, an English football team, is nicknamed "The
Canaries" due to the city once being a famous centre for breeding and
export of the birds. The club adopted the colours of yellow and green in
homage. Jacob Mackley, of Norwich, won many prizes with birds of the local
variety and shipped about 10,000 Norwich to New York every year. In the early
1900s, he opened his aviaries to the public for three days and 10,000 people
turned up.
****
With the loss of the final
feathered pest, the eviction of the surfer husband and his subsequently being
tasked with caring for his own daughter, my responsibilities in life became
narrowed down to more menial things like working two jobs and educating myself.
Since I had a flare for getting tasks done efficiently and in much less time
than most, I had more time to indulge in my hobbies of surfing, dancing,
theatre and teenage birds, not necessarily in that order. Though I didn't have much
success with girls my age, I did seem to attract the attention of their divorcee
mothers, especially since dancing and surfing had sculpted my physique in such
a way that certain features became more pronounced than others. It was at this point that the "Nice Ass" comments coming from my mother's thirty something girlfriends heralded a much greater threat to my amour propre, for it was under their direct tutelage that I discovered my true value to the birds that flocked below the steeple, many of whom are less straight-laced than some would have some believe.
