when i was a young banana, i had two things i really loved. one was a tiny fully-functioning printing press and the other was a parakeet i got at k-mart. the printing press was incredible. it had little rubber letters that one could place in a tray, all tight and rubbery against each other, and then that spring-loaded tray would go in the main press. there was an inky cloth i think that went with it, but then with a metal crank arm, the paper would roll over the letters and out came a perfectly printed note. they had little pictures you could print too. one was of an old-time announcer standing at a microphone. so i did all kinds of announcements: my birthday, the birthdays of the beatles (even though they had long broken up) and i announced the arrival of bud, my blue parakeet.
though in my family, i had grown up with dogs and a horde of hamster, we never had a bird. that was until i got the idea. we went to k-mart, and i got the cage, the little sand-paper coated perch covers, a cuttlefish bone and the bird. that was it. all you needed to walk out of there with a live bird was a mom with a checkbook. it seemed too easy. i was crazy about that bird. he used to scritch his little feet on the bottom paper which also had that sandpaper coating and it would jump around and flit and play with the hanging toys in the cage. i would spend hours watching him hull seeds with his beak. my sister was reading a 7-part serial novel in that same timeframe i think, but i loved watching the bird's beak work. he seemed to take a liking to me, always jumping right onto my finger when i presented it in his cage. i thought he might want to fly around one day, so i took him out of the cage and he flapped wildly all over my room until he hit a wall. he fell down and after a second, righted himself and flapped around again, hitting another wall. then i put him back in the cage.
a little while later, a friend of a neighbor said i ought to clip bud's wings, so he could fly. well, it was a lot like pickled pigs' feet or barbecued ribs, because when i heard that he was going to clip the bird's wings, i didn't really understand that he was actually going to CLIP THE BIRD'S WINGS.
i watched as this guy held bud in his hand, fanned out one wing, and then just cut the whole lower half of the wing off. it was sickening. then he did the other side, and handed the bird back to me. half of the wings were strewn there on the floor like tiny fountain pens. i didn't know what to say, and i put bud back in the cage. later on, i took him out and he couldn't even get up midway in the air in my room before falling back to my bed. the whole thing was hideous. i didn't know if the guy had done it right or what--he did say something about a blood feather--but the whole thing made me feel really bad. and what happened later was that i started to have nightmares about bud's cage. i wasn't the best at cleaning his cage, and the seeds and hulls all over the carpet might have attracted a little pest or two, but i don't think it was that bad. but in my dreams, all kinds of worms and maggots and flying insects invaded poor bud's cage. they were all over my dresser and the whole thing was awful.
you know, i don't even know what happened to bud. i am sure that my mother will read this and she'll tell me what happened to him, but i am thinking that i don't want to know. we had little funerals for all of our hamsters and even our beloved dogs. oh and also we had a gravestone for tubby the turtle and some goldfish. i think that bud is out there too. i must have blocked the whole thing out. anyway, i made up some pretty neat stationery on my printing press with all the news about bud while he was with me. that bird had the best publicist in the city. i think i will look on ebay for one of those old printing presses. it was so neat. but bud was one-of-a-kind. he was a beautiful bird.
