The Road to Portsmouth Is Paved with Good Intentions

Esmerelda is my girly green Ranger, all tricked out with a matching cap, a.k.a. the Mobile Executive Doghouse. She's shown below having a grille-to-grille rendezvous with a studly Rolls in the Walmart parking lot. Yep, that's a Pizza Hut across the street. Only in Newport.

But sometimes duty calls me to one of the other island communities, or even (gasp!) across the bridges to The Other Side. Today I was en route to a meeting in Portsmouth, on the North end of the island, about 20 minutes from my house. Esmerelda was purring along on East Main Road, keeping me amused with the latest from NPR. A light rain dotted her windshield, so she swatted it away with her wipers. The midday traffic was light to moderate as we neared the Middletown-Portsmouth line. We were cruising in the left travel lane, since I planned to hang a left at Union Street fairly soon.

Then the small black SUV up ahead of me in the right lane busted a move that jolted me out of my comfort zone. With plenty of room, it drifted into the left lane in front of me - and kept on going until its driver's side wheels were on the wrong side of the double yellow center line. And stayed there for a few ticks. Then drifted back until the vehicle was straddling the lane divider. Then back to the left lane for a bit, then back over the center line again.

I punched the radio off and patted my Bluetooth earpiece to be sure it was well seated. With left hand firmly on the wheel, I dipped into my pocket, pulled out my trusty iPhone, and thumbed up the phone keypad. 911, then Call. I'm not too sure whether the black SUV had picked up speed, or I had slowed down, but the gap between us had grown too wide for me to be able to read the license plate. While I was squinting at it, the 911 operator said something, so I announced that I was following an erratic driver on East Main Road in Portsmouth. Just for emphasis, the black SUV crossed completely into the oncoming lane - all four tires rolling in the wrong direction. "Oh crap!" I explained calmly. The operator promptly patched me through to the Portsmouth police.

The black SUV blew through the light where I'd planned to turn left, so I stayed on its track, reeling off a play-by-play color commentary to the Portsmouth dispatcher, punctuated by landmarks: "He's in the middle of both northbound lanes . . . We're just passing Rocco's Pizza . . . Moriarty's Invisible Fence . . . Over the center line again . . . I'm at the fire station . . ." As we crested Quaker Hill and started down toward the fork at the bank, one car, then another pulled into the left lane between me and the subject of my phone conversation.  I described Esmerelda to the dispatcher and counted out my plate number. The light at the intersection turned green as the black SUV took the left fork, followed by - now - three cars, then me in Esmerelda, still talking to the dispatcher. As I cleared the intersection, I glanced in my rear-view mirror for the first time in I don't know when, and saw that I had a cruiser right on my tailgate - yay! I got eyes front just in time to see the object of our pursuit go all the way into the oncoming lane again, even as I was wondering if the guy was gonna make a liar of me now that the cops were there. My escort hit his lights and blew past me in the breakdown lane, followed by a second cruiser that I hadn't even seen.

"They've got him!" I yelled to the dispatcher, who politely thanked me for my help and let me go without asking if I was using a hands-free device. As we passed, I gave a conspiratorial wave to the two officers who were directing traffic around the stopped SUV and the two police vehicles. Then I noticed that Esmerelda's inspection sticker is out of date. I gave her dashboard a pat, promised I'd take care of the sticker thing this week, and grinned the rest of the way to my meeting.

Newport Gone Wild?

Here I sit, using a fine-toothed comb to remove a few hundred stubborn clinging little seed pods that have hooked themselves into my fleece pullover and lounge pants. I was attacked by the tiny cling-ons when I waded into my weed-infested back lot to resolve a standoff between my dog Tucker and an alien intruder perched atop the 8-foot back fence. Tucker is the clever canine who so suavely advised me how to handle the bears on the porch in the dream recounted in my last post.

Tucker's got a touch of the wild himself, being an Australian kelpie, or kelpie/cattle dog mix. Either way, he's 100% herding dog, with the body type, genetic trace, and impressive incisors of a dingo, a true proto dog. His beautiful coat is a remarkable all-season personal environment; I have so much respect for its rain-forest-like perfect balance that I've never bathed Tucker, or needed to. But I did have to give him a thorough brushing tonight to get rid of the same seeds that adorned me.

So I was happily - well, not so happily, but okay about it - updating one of the websites I'm mistress of, when Tucker sounded off, and off, and off in the back lot. He has several voices, and this one was the "There's an alien species trying to breach the border of my territory." This is becoming more and more common around here, and it's never a good thing. Interesting, sometimes - like the young possum Tuckie treed in the lilac, but that's a rarity.

Long ago, Tucker appointed himself the neighborhood skunk warden, and I'm pleased to say that there have been very few whiffs around this summer. I should note that Rhode Island may very well have the highest skunk count per square mile of any state in the Union. I used to explain to my Mom that Rhode Island was the only state in the country that had a bivalve (the quahog) as the state bird, and a rodent (the skunk) as the state flower. But the downside of Tucker's anti-skunk campaign is that other species have moved in as the skunks have relocated.

There are possums, as previously mentioned. They've been in the neighborhood for at least five years now. Deer are fairly common on the island, but it's still a surprise to hear of sightings in the city. However, Tucker has located and perfumed himself with deer poop in city parks on two occasions, and let me tell you, it's beyond nasty, plus it has a half-life of many months.

Hawks live in the higher reaches of Newport's church towers. Foxes abound all along the shoreline of the island. Glossy ibis and tricolor herons and swans inhabit our wetlands. The wild turkey population is exploding, and Canada geese are everywhere, carpet-bombing grassy areas with Yorkie-sized poops. There's a well-established mink colony at Sachuest Point.

And the Eastern coyotes - well, the island now sports multiple packs. My son-in-law, Diesel Mike, reports coyote sightings on Bellevue Avenue on almost every one of his daily lunchtime circuits of the Ten-Mile Drive. Over on the Navy base, you can sit on the deck at the Chiefs' Club at sunset and listen to the local pack sing along with the amplified broadcast of Taps. They are widely believed to be responsible for the rising rate of pet cat disappearances. Why, I ask, why can't they prey on all those damn geese?

Raccoons used to live under the porch of the Elks Lodge a block over, but were rousted and went elsewhere. Apparently "elsewhere" was somewhere in, around, or under an unoccupied multi-unit house on Prospect Hill St., which runs up to Bellevue behind my house. Now the multi-unit is being totally rehabbed, and it seems the 'coons are on the street again. My neighbors have found scat in their yard, and a fairly hefty animal broke a branch, flattening a mound of hostas beneath it.

So, while Tucker was trying to dislodge the critter atop the fence, I called my neighbor two doors down, whose back fence continues mine. As she flashlit her way to her back fence to get a look at whatever it was, she mentioned that the neighbor three doors down had recently seen a fisher cat descending a nearby tree trunk. He ID'd the dimly seen animal as a fisher cat because it was climbing down headfirst, an unusual ability made possible by its sharp-clawed hind paws, which can swivel 180 degrees.

"Fisher cat" is a New-Englandism; the animal's name is actually just fisher, a colloquialization of the French word fichet, a European polecat. It's a member of the Mustelids, which include wolverines, weasels, and those cute little ferrets. Adult fishers are similar in size and coloring to raccoons, although there's no relationship. Head and ear shapes are similar, and both varmints have long, bushy tails. 'Coons, of course, have the distinctive eye mask and ringed tail, which fishers do not. And just like the aforementioned Eastern coyotes, the fisher population in Rhode Island has gone from zero to thriving in recent years. Reports of fisher attacks on dogs and other domestic animals have piled up from all over the state, reinforcing their ferocious reputation.

Still, I hadn't heard of fishers on the island up until now. I tried to get some more light on the animal with my headlamp and flashlight, but couldn't get a good look at its face because it was backlit by security lights on an adjacent building. Nor could I see a tail of any kind, ringed or otherwise. Meanwhile, Tucker was still growling and barking fiercely, lunging at the fence below the critter, which wasn't budging. My neighbor, still on the phone as she tried to get a look through a screen of tree branches, said she thought she saw a mask. That made me a little less anxious - if I had to choose between a raccoon and a fisher, I'd vote for the raccoon any day, in spite of their known ability to kill a dog or cat if cornered.

To try to break the standoff, I picked up the hoe that lives next to my compost bin, waded deeper into the weeds, and gave the fence a couple of good whacks. The critter apparently didn't like the vibrations and noise, because it started creeping toward the junction of my fence with the neighbors', giving my neighbor a somewhat better view. She confirmed that it was indeed a raccoon, to the relief of both of us.

As the 'coon continued its meander out of his territory, Tucker elected to stand down and finally come to my call. Whew! I shooed him back into the house, gave him some well-deserved treats for a job well done, brushed the grabby seeds out of his coat, and settled in to remove same from my garments. Then I followed up by googling fishers and raccoons, which answered some questions - are there fishers in Little Rhody? Yep. Are they really bad-asses? Kinda. Can raccoons go down a tree headfirst? Aha! Yes, they can, for the same reason as fishers, so the recent sighting might have been a raccoon. Are there fishers living on Aquidneck Island, in my neighborhood? Can't answer that one yet, but I'd sure like to know. Stay tuned!

Bears on the Porch, Oh My!

So there I was, tucked up all cozy in my bed, snoozing peacefully. The dream movie was spooling along as usual, little bits of this and that, not much of note. Then a familiar scene brightened the "screen" - I was in my girly green Ranger, accompanied by my daughter Meredith. We'd been somewhere unspecified, and were now pulling up in front of my house. I glanced up at the front porch, a 10' by 10' space reached by 5 broad granite steps. OMG! The porch and upper steps were a heaving mass of BEARS! It was hard to tell exactly how many, but at least three - one a golden brown, and the rest black. They seemed to be wrestling playfully, and somehow I knew - although I couldn't see him - that my dog Tucker was in the midst of the roiling scrum.

Thinking fast, I asked Meredith to reach through the back slider and open the tailgate so I could call Tucker to safety in the back of the truck. Of course, I'd asked the impossible - it's a long-bed truck, and the sliders in the cab and cap are too small for any adult human to lean through, much less reach the distant tailgate. But dreams have their own logic, and somehow the tailgate got opened anyway.

I yelled "Load up!" Bursting from the writhing mountain of bear fur, Tucker bounded onto the tailgate and dog-trotted forward to the slider, where he advised us that we should call the city animal control officer (he speaks very well for a dingo). Right! I started punching buttons on my cell phone, but somehow managed to hit all the wrong keys on each attempt. Frustrated, I jumped out of the truck and ran around the corner to an imaginary real estate office, where I commandeered a desk phone and punched in the police emergency number.

As I did so, I glanced out the bay window and saw a whole crew of EBTs (Emergency Bear Technicians) in the open-front office next door, wrangling several heavily sedated bears onto gurneys so they could be loaded into the flashing rescue trucks lined up outside on fashionable Bellevue Avenue. How the EBTs and bears got there so fast is a dream mystery, never to be solved. The bears were passed out cold on their backs, paws in air, tongues lolling out, soaked in sweat after all that rasslin'.

Right about then, someone answered the phone at the police station. I assured them that the EBTs were already on the scene, but that the environmental people might want to know, because a sweaty bear is a stinky bear. As I started fretting about how to clean the stinky bear sweat off my porch, Tucker rolled over and had a nice morning stretch at the end of my bed, herding the bears off to the dream archives. Good doggie!

Street to the Heart

This is soooo cool! This link doesn't need any more words from me, cuz the pictures are worth 10,000 times more!

Bren Bataclan's Random Acts of Happy Art


Go forth and do likewise!

Table for Eight

There were eight of us hardy campers, just in from the wilds of Maine’s West Branch region, where we’d hung out with timber tigers (red squirrels), survived a bear alert (never saw one), and rafted the Class 5 rapids of the West Branch of the Penobscot. As all campers know, the rules of polite society are shucked as soon as the tent is pitched. Belching, scratching, and farting are all allowed (aloud!), even encouraged.

We did have one little lapse into etiquette while rafting. We’d just done the 10-foot drop down Nesowadnohunk Falls, and had pulled off to the edge of the stream to bail the raft. A snazzy white Crabapple Adventures raft bounced out of the foam at the bottom of the Falls and pulled over next to us. Robert, one of our party, glanced over and politely inquired, in the words of a popular mustard commercial of the time, “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”

His question was met with blank stares from the Crabapple raft. Amy, Robert’s sister-in-law, smacked Robert smartly with her paddle and barked, “You idiot – they’re Canadian!”

Back to the story: so after 5 glorious days in the wilderness, the eight of us – 4 men, 4 women – had moved camp to Seawall Campground on Mount Desert Island, home to some of Maine’s tonier Downeast communities. Seawall Campground is a lovely coastal campground run by the U. S. Park Service. It has fire rings and flush toilets, and features slide shows by the rangers on occasion.

That night’s slide show was an introduction to Seawall Campground and coastal Maine in general. Geared to the younger members of the audience, the show began with a series of contrast slides on animals and where you’d not expect to find them.

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a camel
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: the frozen north
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a red squirrel
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: coral reef scene
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a whale
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: vast desert spaces
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a big ol’ rhinoceros
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: the sign at the entrance to Seawall Campground
Karen, into Shaun’s ear (having recently seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, with its campfire-stomping rhino fire warden): “Nooooo – we’d lose our fire!”

Shaun, in hysterics, fell off the log bench, disrupting the show until he managed to get a grip again.

Back to the story: so there we were, the eight of us, and we’d seen the slide show, slaked our thirst, and decided we were up for a meal that somebody else had cooked. So off we went to a colorful little lobster boil eatery called Duddy’s, in nearby Bass Harbor (pronounced HAH-bah).

Shaun and I had dined there on a previous trip, finding the food tasty and the waitress – well, she was cool. She sat down at our table and told us her life story. We had the impression that this wasn’t uncommon at Duddy’s. Some of the other wait staff looked like they might have been on work-release.

So Duddy’s was an appropriate choice for a bunch of hygienically challenged campers looking for a good feed. We were ushered into the Large Group room, which featured two long tables which neatly seated eight each. The other one was already occupied by another party of eight, but the head count was the only similarity. Male and female alike, they were attired in khakis, Topsiders without socks, and polo shirts. We guessed that they were slumming from Northeast Hahbah or Bah Hahbah.

We lost no time ordering mass quantities of mollusks, crustaceans, and beer, which we fell upon ravenously. It was in the relative silence created by the first wave of ingestion that the neighboring table began to make its presence known. Although there was a form of general conversation going on over there, the woman at the head of the table had something important to say, and by God, she was going to make sure everyone heard it. Her braying became louder and louder, occasioning some irked looks around our table as she began to dominate our conversation as well.

Our waitress arrived to clear away the first round of debris by the simple expedient of pulling up a trash can and sweeping the throwaways right off the table into it. She was handing around the next set of plates when a booming pronouncement from the dominatrix of the next table stopped us all cold.

“So there I was, trapped between the fourth and fifth astral plane, and couldn’t get back to my body!”

That’s when the madness took me. I leaned over to Polly, next to me at the end of the table, and said, “Campers’ Rules. No holds barred. Pass it on!” She did.

There ensued such a cacophony of belching, slurping, farting, and general rudeness that the waitress collapsed against the doorframe in hysterics. I should note that all this was from the women of our party. The men, who certainly had not been deficient in the noxious emissions department earlier in the trip, seemed unable to muster up as much as a mouse fart, and had to settle for singing extremely bawdy sea chanteys at the top of their lungs. Our table of eight had dispatched the khaki-wearers to their own astral plane, leaving us in clear possession of ours.

Seagulls

Spindrift is one of those things that sounds a great deal more romantic than it is. I can always tell when it's spindrift weather by watching the seagulls. There's a point of wind velocity when a sensible gull figures it's pure foolishness to go aloft; another notch higher on the anemometer and he won’t even try to stand up. When you can see hundreds of gulls but no gull feet, it's spindrift time. The air will be full of little blobs of dirty suds scudding past and skittering along the shore, rafting up in trembling yellowish clots. The gulls hunker down in feathered stoicism, beaks dead into the wind, blinking and flicking their wings as the occasional bits of foam bounce off them.

Now, a hunkered-down gull is nothing but pure appetite tacked to a rock. The longer the blow goes on, the hungrier the gull gets. It's a good thing the coast is littered with gull goodies after a gale; by the time the storm ends, the seagulls are running on empty, and heaven help the creature that gets between them and the beach buffet.

On the New England coast, you're more likely to be bedeviled by gulls than by ants when you picnic. Of course, the gulls have a vast natural advantage, hanging up there on the high breezes, taking inventory of your menu with that preternaturally acute vision of theirs; then, mewing approval, they'll plummet abruptly to a landing just out of reach, where they strut and preen and yammer and nag until someone finally tosses a tidbit into the crowd - then all hell breaks loose. Flipping a single pickle chip into a dozen-gull flock is about the same as dropping a meatball into a school of feeding sharks. The winner and all the sore losers will then scream hideous slanders about the morals of your immediate ancestors, until bribed by more goodies. In no time at all, you'll find your feast stripped of all its trimmings, while you gnaw guiltily at the last chicken leg under the gimlet gaze of your feathered luncheon guests, who are, of course, waiting for the bone.

Gulls are such dedicated omnivores. I once shared a sunny half-hour on a dock with a gull that was dead-set on ingesting a smallish, extremely dead yellowtail flounder that had evidently been sun-baked to the hardness of cold-rolled steel. If it had been, say, a skinny little smelt or such, maybe he could have choked it down; but that broad, flat flounder oval was more than he could get his beak around. Not that he didn’t try to whittle it down to size, worrying away at the edges with that scissor-edged beak, but to no avail. He was still gnawing when I left.

The sheer capacity of the individual gull is staggering, as illustrated by the case of the deep-dish apple-rhubarb pie. There had been more than half of it left after the three of us Maine campers had had a piece, but then Sam the dog took an unauthorized sample, and the third of a pie that was left lost its appeal for the rest of us. But we figured Oscar would appreciate it.

The cabin was perched precariously on a rocky hillside that pitched steeply down to the frigid waters of Prettymarsh Harbor; seven or eight camps are tucked away, all but invisible, in the pines that ring the cobbled shore. You can hear a screen door slam on the far side of the water, or a fish break the surface half a mile away. Oscar easily picked up our cocktail-hour chitchat and cruised in from the spiraling thermal where he’d been hang-gliding.

Oscar was a standard-model herring gull with a brassy self-assurance that brought him daily to our porch railing for hors d'oeuvres and idle gossip. Deep-dish apple-rhubarb pie being a rarity in those parts, we figured it would get him even more excited than his usual handouts of popcorn and crackers. Wanting a ringside view of the action, we carefully laid out a tempting trail of pie bits, starting at his usual landing spot at the far end of the rail, and ending at the pie plate, which was stage center on the rail in front of our chairs. Sure enough, Oscar ate his way down the rail, morsel by morsel, watching us with yellow-eyed suspicion as he inched closer - three more bites, two, then only one - Oscar stalled momentarily, but gluttony beat out caution and he pounced on the pie with a croak of glee. Carefully pinning down his prize by planting one webbed foot firmly on the edge of the foil plate, he scissored out one hunk of pie after another and gulped it down until there wasn't a crumb left. Then, as if to show us he still wasn't full, he gave the plate a couple of good chomps before tossing it disdainfully at our feet. His takeoff was a bit sluggish, but a deep-dish pie is serious ballast, after all. Fortunately, he cleared the porch before he blew the ballast tanks.

The beggarly nature of seagulls makes them easy marks for the likes of the TOWN & COUNTRY photographer who was doing a high-fashion shoot on the Newport gold coast. The scenario called for a Christmas picnic by the sea, so the boulders at Price's Neck were artfully sprinkled with flaked Styrofoam to simulate drifting snow. Out of camera range, a truckload of ice-cubes lay heaped on the beach, chilling a case of champagne and a couple of dozen baskets of strawberries. More ice cubes were tucked into a hollow in the rocks, cradling two bottles of champagne and a pretty bowl of berries; right next to it crackled a healthy bonfire. Draped over the rocks by the fire and ice was the sleek daughter of an old and wealthy Newport family, tastefully arrayed in a fisherman's sweater, faded jeans, and an ankle-length lynx coat. It was August.

Various artistic types clambered over the rocks, adjusting lights and grooming the lounging heiress. Just across the little cove waited the extras, a couple of dozen gulls milling around peevishly and squabbling amongst themselves. They’d been primed for action with a handout of day-old bread tossed by two flunkies standing on the sidelines of the shot. Every time the photographer had a shot framed and lit to his satisfaction, he’d call "Gulls!", the flunkies would heave hunks of bird bait into the air, and the sky behind the shot would immediately fill with flashing black-and-white wings. Turned out the ratio of bread to film had been sorely miscalculated, though; the bread ran out early, as did a couple of bags of potato chips. In the end, economy was flung to the winds and the strawberries were flung to the seagulls, basket after succulent basket.

Marie Antoinette would have appreciated the solution.

Flight Feathers

Manhattan: July, 1984. A filthy-hot Sunday afternoon in Soho, prime time for gallery-hopping. The kulturati were stalking their prey from boutique to gallery to showroom, ready to swoop in for the kill; the sidewalks were aswirl with trendy humanity. On West Broadway, there was a string trio playing in the open window of the restaurant/gallery Central Falls. Farther up the street, live mannequins robot-danced in the show window of a boutique, to the giggles of a crowd outside. The street kids splashed color all over the streets with their fluorescent hair, face paint, and funny sox, lounging on corners and stoops, watching and posing, smoking suspect cigarettes and letting on they were bored.

My Australian friends, attracted by a high-voltage window display, wandered into a big boutique on Spring Street. Since I’d more or less appointed myself tour guide, I followed, relieved to be getting out of the sun, but not overly thrilled at the decibel level in the place. A real, honest-to-God disquaire stood behind a bank of fancy electronics, pumping non-stop New Sound into the shop.

From there, though, things started looking a bit better. Not far from the front door, a pretty cat was curled into a furry cushion on the seat of a tall chair. A chattering sound penetrated the curtain of disco; I traced it to a pair of black-faced lovebirds in a cage hung amidst greenery. Not far from them was another cage with a pair of Amazon parrots. Still another snoozing kitty turned up farther on. How astonishing to find all these creatures amidst the blare and jostle!

I turned around to look for my friends, and found myself face-to-face with a really big cage – big enough that I couldn’t at first locate its resident, who blended beautifully into the green of the ficus tree beyond. His stillness didn’t betray him, but the patch of maroon feathers above his beak did – a very handsome military macaw, with all the dignity of considerable size.

I spoke to him in macaw, a language I’d been well schooled in by my own feathered child, Panama Red. The big fellow didn’t respond. I moved around the cage to get closer. He straightened up, flattened the feathers down tight on his head, and looked at me with what seemed to be alarm. Poor thing! I spoke again, as soothingly as I could, in English and in macaw, running on in a sort of chant of reassurance, getting as close as I could so I wouldn’t have to speak over the pounding sounds filling the air. Gradually, the head feathers started to lift. His pupils dilated, calming his gaze. He inspected me, leaning a bit in my direction. I circled back to the end of the perch that didn’t terminate by the ficus tree; I’m not crazy about lurking in the shrubbery, particularly not the indoor kind.

He took a couple of steps away from the ficus tree end and gave himself a good shake, fluffing his feathers still more. The forward head feathers were standing well up by now, a sure sign that a parrot is feeling friendly. I poked a couple of fingers through the bars in a scratching motion, still keeping up the idle chit-chat. He split the difference between us, sidling halfway over, and stretching his head toward my hand. Not quite close enough! Another couple of steps, and he was in range. This was the tricky part. I knew all too well from my own big macaw just what that beak could do. Brazil nuts were easy; fingerbones could be too. He nudged my finger with his beak; he stuck out his funny black tongue and licked it. I rubbed his beak lightly; he moved a little closer. I worked my way up the beak to the maroon feathers above, and brushed them gently against the direction they lay. He started a little, then decided I had the right moves and bent his head toward me. Within moments, he’d surrendered completely, closing his eyes blissfully as I scratched under his chin and in back of his eye patches where his ear-holes were.

“OMIGOD DON’T DO THAT HE BITES!”

I jumped, and so did my new friend. Between the thick disco and the thick carpeting, I hadn’t heard this guy, salesman or manager or whatever, coming.

“He does not,” I snapped, surprised by my own temper, holding up my hand to prove it was intact. “He’s sweet and he’s lonely. I’ll take responsibility for it if he does bite me.” I turned my back on the man and resumed my conversation with the bird.

That brief flash of anger had crystallized a cloud of thoughts – images, really – that had been floating around wordless in my head. It dawned on me that the bird’s initial composure hadn’t been due to dignity, but to depression. He longed, like any other intelligent, social creature, for physical contact and warmth. Even now he was pressed hard against the bars of the cage, crooning hoarse little RRRRRs of pleasure as I scratched. But what he got was an assaultive environment of unremitting noise and humans who wanted nothing to do with him.

What was it, I wondered, that would lead anyone to spend in the neighborhood of $2000 for a living creature that served no purpose except set decoration? A purebred dog or cat costing much less would be a family’s pampered darling, even though equipped with fang and claw worthy of as much respect as a macaw’s beak. A saddle horse could cost as much or more, and would be stroked and groomed and given treats despite the occasional nip or kick. Why, then, should a four-pound bird of beautiful hues and fanciful shape be an untouchable?

I think it’s the feathers. They strike some ancient chord in us, the tribe of furred and hairy creatures; dinosaurs and reptiles were the ancestors of birds, and scales the ancestors of feathers. All scaly pets – fish, lizards, snakes – are kept isolated and on display. Look but don’t touch. Slimy. Cold-blooded. Okay, most people know birds are warm-blooded, but they aren’t like us. They aren’t mammals. They lay eggs like lizards. They have beaks. THEY CAN FLY!

That’s the answer right there. We live among these flying wonders, and a mean small corner of our souls envies that joyous flight. It’s too absurd for us to comprehend. Never mind that it’s just daily business to a bird – it looks like too much fun.

I once confronted that awe of free flight in a half-finished shell of a house by the ocean. A young kestrel had gotten in through some opening or other and couldn’t find his way out. He was a dead bird if I didn’t do something, so I cornered him in a hall and threw my lightweight windbreaker over him. Carefully, I reached in and disentangled him from the fabric, wary of his hawk beak and talons. Oddly, he chose not to struggle or strike; he simply lay on his back in my hand, his black eyes remote, resigned, while I admired him. What a tiny, beautiful, noble creature he was! Mostly I remember the surprising frivolousness of his pretty speckled breast, and the firm, compact feel of his powerful little body in my hand.

I took him outside and set him on the ground. He didn’t move. I began to worry that I might have hurt him when I netted him. I picked him up again, one hand under him, the other lightly on his back, starting to check for injuries. Somehow, I don’t know exactly how, he pushed himself out of my hands and dropped toward the ground. At the very last instant, he fanned his wings and was off with a crack of pinions against air, a single cry ringing behind him.

It is that which we, earthbound in our own bodies, can never do nor ever understand – free flight from free fall. Betcha can’t say that three times fast!