Birds my father has known

Going back his earliest childhood, my dad has had an almost magical connection to birds. I was never able to understand (much less emulate) his ability to extend an empty hand, and within seconds have a blue jay fly down and perch there for a moment. (My grandfather possessed the same gift; both he and my father had mastered whatever call it was that gave birds the signal to “come over here—it’s safe,” which always amazed me as a child.)  

Gene and his pheasant, ca. 1932

On his way to school one morning, he found an injured pheasant, which he carried back home and put in the enclosure with the chickens.  The pheasant recovered, and stayed on as a family pet—until the day my great-grandmother made the mistake of showing the bird to an itinerant vegetable seller who grabbed the hapless creature and wrung its neck, thinking that’s what she wanted.  Ever practical, Grandma Clara prepared the pheasant for dinner, since the damage was done.  I asked my dad recently if he remembers eating any. “I ate some,” he said, with a somewhat guilty look. When I asked how it tasted, he paused, shrugging. “It tasted like chicken.” 

He was less complacent about the ducks—which he cherished as pets, unlike the more numerous chickens which were a regular part of the family diet. On special occasions when duck was served, my father refused to partake of it.

Asking him now about the chickens his family raised, he recalls the old rooster, Tu-Tu, who he grew up with.  “My mother had named him Cho-Cho but I couldn’t pronounce that, so he became Tu-Tu.” The rooster, too, met an unhappy end when a well-intentioned neighbor gave the family a younger rooster which quickly attacked Tu-Tu, inflicting such extensive injuries that he had to be finished off by my great-grandmother, who was the designated chicken executioner.

I try to imagine the life my father had, growing up in the country with a variety of animals and very few neighbors, exactly the opposite of my own suburban upbringing.  We usually had a solitary cat, and at one point got a couple of parakeets which were eventually supposed to learn how to talk. When they never did, I lost interest and my father ended up caring for them.

The last bird he and my stepmother owned was a finch, Stanley. He’d outlasted two mates and then lived for an extended period as a widower. Every morning my dad would carry him in his cage downstairs to the living room where he could look out the window and chirp; Gene would give him fresh carrot tops as a treat and chirp back at him.

Over 10 years old, nearly featherless and barely able to hang on to his perch, Stanley ended his life with a splash—falling into his bath and unable to get out. My parents were out for a walk at the time, and returned to find him there, drowned.  They held a sad little burial ceremony for him out back and that was the end of it.

Roast Pheasant