jim jenness
Birdman
Yesterday my cat brought home a bird. Yes the cat wears a bell, and yes, we told him years ago that it would be better for him to be an indoor cat. He told us, with countless decapitated rats, that the bell didn’t fool anyone and really, he was good outdoors. Still it is almost unknown for him to bring home a bird.
The bird was not dead, far from it; not even after it had flown several laps around the house and rammed all the windows at full sparrow speed. It was, by turn, both stealthy and speedily uncatchable. So I left the sparrow enjoying all the mod-cons of my home, and the cat tolerating his brother’s company in the back yard, and I went to work.
I work with children, four, five and six year olds. Many adults who look at them see only sweetness and innocence; and sometimes they just see the grime and snot, but I’ve watched those kids pull the teeth from a raccoon skull, so I felt comfortable telling them about my misadventures of that morning; with the cat, the bird and the butterfly net. Did I not mention the butterfly net? I probably shouldn’t go into that, it all got a bit crazy, at some point the screen door got pulled off its hinges. Most of the children identified with the cat, because… well cats are cool. Alas, very few were rooting for the bird.
Later that afternoon I went home and finally netted the sparrow. I took him outside and he flew away into the branches of some black walnut trees. Today, at work, the children all asked about the bird, nobody asked about the cat, and truly the cat would not value their concern. He lies asleep on my daughter’s bed, dreaming of battle.
Somewhere in the middle of the whole shenanigans I saw this picture and it made me smile. A boy pretending to be a bird, because birds are cool too you know.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
