Sleeps with Dogs (5 page)

Inside the house, the noise had been so frenzied and confusing it was impossible to sort one bird's call from the next. The further away I got, the more distinct each caw and cry became. By the eleventh house, I couldn't hear them unless I stopped walking and strained really hard. We were nearing the public park at the end of the street, so we crossed, and the dogs took off into the outfield of the baseball diamond. I hadn't brought a ball or a toy, but I found an adequate stick and gave it a toss. They didn't even notice I'd thrown it, even though it fell a few feet from where Sasha was bounding about. Clearly not retrievers.

Back at the house, the vizlas flopped down on the furniture. Sterling was still asking for toast. And there was still no coffee. I should have paid better attention to the implications when Bev had served me tea from her vast collection. Definitely not a coffee drinker.

From my extensive reading, I understood that each bird had a very specific diet. After putting two pieces of toast in the toaster oven—one for me, one for Sterling—I got down to sorting the requirements for each. There were apples to chop into specific sizes, supplemented by mango and papaya, as well as some broccoli and lettuce. There was an astonishing assortment of nuts to crack in varying degrees, meant to supplement each breed's seed blend, mixed with a handful of ZuPreem fruit pellets and just a sprinkle of something called Tropimix.

I started in the back room with the two smallest birds, dumping their uneaten pellet mix and nuts and fruits and veggies into the compost bin. According to the instructions, they got no more than two cashews, a couple of peanuts, and maybe a pistachio as a treat.

Since Echo was allegedly a nipper, I was careful to get in and out of his cage quickly. Nora took her walnuts partially cracked, which she received without a peep, to my great relief. In the hallway between office and kitchen, I fed the fish first, if only to spite Sterling, who was still crowing about his toast. As a matter of principal I ate my piece first, which didn't sit well with him at all. Even if he did say, “Please,” I wasn't eating second to a bird.

After Aphrodite got her blend of pellets, broccoli, lettuce, and fruits, along with her peanuts (in the shell, un-cracked), I moved on to Sterling's breakfast. He took the toast in his beak, finally shutting up and focusing instead on tearing impressively large chunks out of the buttered bread while maneuvering it with his talons. He received double the food: bowls inside the cage and on the top as
well, near his exterior perch. His favorite nut was the walnut, which I lightly cracked on the butcher block with a hammer.

Krishna ate shelled peanuts, while Bonsai preferred his in the shell (“He loves a challenge!” according to his printout), so I only cracked his nuts lightly with the handle of the hammer rather than the head.

Bev had asked me to speak to the birds. This shouldn't have felt as strange as it did, since I'd always spoken to dogs and cats—those with whom I'd grown up, cared for at the pet store, and even met on the street. I think the primary difference was that not a single one of those animals had ever spoken back to me, as Aphrodite and Sterling could. I'd never been spoken to by a bird—or any other non-human—before, and it was far more off-putting than I'd anticipated.

“All right, Bonsai,” I ventured. “Yum, yum. I like your bell!” He, unlike his more fluent friends, said nothing.

With the riotous sun salutation behind us, and the birds happily sated on their nuts and seeds and fruit, it was time to start back at the beginning with Bindi, Echo, and Nora's cages. This time I washed and refilled their water bowls and replaced the food- and droppings-spotted newspaper lining.

I hate the feel of newspaper; I have for as long as I can remember. When I was young, recycling was my household chore (“If you're going to be part of this family you have to contribute!” my parents said). I shuddered to handle the weeks' worth of
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and
The New York Times,
packing them in to paper bags to be placed curbside. I can only guess that my loathing of that smooth, sooty texture stemmed from the moment when, at the inquisitive age of four, I decided that I'd like to know what a cardboard box tastes like, so I licked one when no one was looking.

By the time I got to Bonsai's cage in the front room, my hands were so covered in bird pee, guano, and wet seed that I hardly noticed the feel of the newspapers anymore. I was effectively wearing bird-shit gloves. Cleaning Bonsai's cage was an exercise in balance, keeping all the peanut shells from tipping onto the hardwood floor. This, now that I looked more closely, might not have been such an issue after all, since there was plenty of poop splattered along the floorboards as well. I mentally added mopping to my list of morning to-dos.

After I finished with the cages and the sweeping, cleaned the kitchen of fruit rinds and shells, packed away all of the seed in the pantry, and mopped up the crusted remnants of bird droppings from the floor, I was feeling like Cinderella of the animal kingdom. Before I left Sasha and Max and their many feathered friends for the day, I went back through the binder to be extra sure I hadn't forgotten any critical steps or instructions. The dogs could access the back patio throughout the day by going through the kitchen, under the broom, and out the dog door in the back room. Sterling was roaming free, no doubt annoying the shit out of Aphrodite. I was pretty sure I'd heard a “
cabrón
” out of her, directed, I assumed, at her neighbor. Bonsai tinkled merrily as he worried his peanut shells. Nora had emitted more than her share of pee-in-my-pants squawks. As long as I was back before the sun started to set, they'd be fine for the day.

Though dark wouldn't fully descend until around eight o'clock, the birds' second sun salutation of the day began as soon as the blindingly golden light of late afternoon started slanting through the window blinds at a certain angle. They knew collectively, instinctively, that the sun was waning and it was time to celebrate. Walking down the sidewalk from where I'd parked, I could clearly hear the jungle concert in full force. I knew from that morning that the
chorus shook the house. What must the neighbors think? I had yet to encounter anyone on the sidewalk during my walks with the dogs, but I was desperately curious to see their reaction to this twice-daily assault on the ears.

Opening the screen door and then the weathered wooden front door, I could also hear the dogs' frenzied growls and whines within. They turned tight circles in the living room while the birds made their joyful noise. With the front door open wide, Sasha and Max were out like ochre-furred bullets into the yard, turning larger and less-frenzied circles there until I opened the front gate out onto the sidewalk.

At least one of the daily walks had to be long and vigorous enough to even come close to tiring these guys out. If I did it right, we'd get back to the house as the sun set, casting long lavender shadows over the low houses of the neighborhood.

In Max and Sasha's neighborhood, the sky was just as wide open as anywhere else in the East Bay, and I found myself standing on the sidewalk with my head thrown back, tracking jetliners as they inched across the darkening sky. I was used to the soaring trees of my Atlanta home. The dense green growth there shielded us from the Southern sun and limited our exposure to what filtered through the canopy, dappling the landscape with a shadowy, shifting light. I was already addicted to the bright, unobstructed California sunshine that drenched everything beneath the perpetually cloudless crystalline sky.

I couldn't speak for the dogs, but I was certainly tired out after our walk. Between all of my other visits that day, I hadn't even walked that far—maybe five miles.

Before heading upstairs for the night, I placed blankets over the cages, returning Sterling to his cage last.

“Good night,” I said.

“Good night,” he replied.

It was barely nine o'clock, but I was ready to crawl into bed. I only hoped Sasha would lay off the kidney shots.

I arrived at the house on my third evening of bird duty to find Bonsai's cage spattered with red. The shells lining the bottom of the cage were flecked with white guano and the deep crimson of congealed bird blood. Sterling was perched high atop the armoire in the living room, looking like he'd swallowed a canary.

“Hello,” he called to me.

“Fuck!”

The broom was lying across the kitchen floor, presumably dislodged by one of the dogs on their way to or from the back door. I extended my arm to Sterling, who turned his head demurely away.

“I'm not asking. Come. Here. Now!” I used both hands to grab him, and he gave a squawk. Once he was locked in his cage with the broom in its right place, I opened Bonsai's cage. He hopped nimbly up on my hand, favoring his left leg. His right leg was mangled, the blue gray of his skin torn and still bleeding. I'm not a bird expert, but I knew that birds do not have a lot of blood in their bodies to lose. At the pet store, we'd used a yellow powder to staunch the flow, in those rare instances when they had reason to bleed. This wasn't covered in these birds' notes, though, and I had no idea where to even start looking for a little bottle of coagulant.

I placed Bonsai back in the cage and went to the garage where the bird carriers were. Thankfully, Bev had noted this in the binder. Bonsai went into his Pet Sherpa without objection. I only dimly registered the additional damage Sterling had inflicted on the window molding during his rampage, a fresh dusting of wood shards and paint underfoot as I shuffled awkwardly out the front door
and through the gate to the car, trying not to bump or jostle the unwieldy carrier too much.

I called Bev from the laminate-and-upholstered chair in the waiting room of the veterinarian's office. Bonsai was in the back, being examined. According to Bev's vacation itinerary, she should've been at her daughter's rehearsal dinner. Ashamed at my cowardice, I was hoping against hope that I'd be able to leave a message instead of having to explain the situation to Bev in real time.

My message was brief and to the point, and I asked her to please return my call at her earliest convenience so that I could update her on Bonsai's condition. Soon after I hung up the phone, the doctor emerged.

“He lost a lot of blood, but he's stable. We've cleaned and wrapped the leg and started him on antibiotics. He'll have to wear a collar to prevent him from interfering with the bandage.”

“A collar?”

“Yes, a cone, around his neck.”

“Ah.”

“How are you at administering oral meds to a bird?”

“Oh, I am fair to . . . ya know . . . good.” I'd never done it in my life.

“Are you ready for the bird, then?”

“Yep.” The doctor must have sensed my hesitation, though, because he demonstrated how to squirt the yellow liquid down the bird's beak using a hand puppet as a stand-in for Bonsai.

Luckily, the vet agreed to bill Bev by mail so I didn't have to worry about the payment. The only substantial amount of money I had to my name was the graduation gift from my parents, sitting in a no-access, high-yield CD at Bank of America. Beyond that I had about $72.

I'd seen the charges, reading the final sum upside down as I
stood at the counter waiting for the vet tech to bring out the bird. I shouldn't have been surprised, considering the leg cleaning and bandaging, the collar, antibiotics, and the demonstration on the puppet, which they surely charged for, too. But I was. Shocked, even. I wondered if $1,200 was par for the course when you have exotic birds for pets. But mostly I was just relieved to not be held responsible for the balance right then. Or hopefully ever, though I had no idea how Bev might react to the news and judge my culpability in the case of Sterling versus Bonsai.

Back in his carrier, Bonsai's cone kept scraping the top and sides of his plastic cage. His e-collar was a comically tiny version of the one that Pearl sported. I was impressed that the vet stocked cones that small, though perhaps it was about the right size for a Teacup Chihuahua or toy poodle. I had Bonsai's meds in a white bag with instructions tucked inside, just like I'd get when I picked up a prescription at the drugstore.

Once we were home, I left Bonsai in his carrier while I scrubbed his cage clean of blood. At last, I gingerly replaced him on the lowest, most substantial limb. Though his leg was wrapped, he still had use of his claw. He was holding it suspended above the perch, tucked close to his body in a way that made him look like a sleeping flamingo, but for the absurd-looking cone around his head. He seemed to be peering at me with a look of reproach.

Since finding Bonsai in his gore-flecked cage, I'd been fighting a growing anxiety that I'd completely missed—or misheard—Bev saying that Bonsai should be left out of his cage while I was away during the day. Only now that it was too late, I heard her voice in my head saying he'd fly into the towel hutch if Sterling should get past the broom barrier.

I reread Bonsai's write-up on the last page of the binder with some measure of dread at what I might discover. In all caps, written
beneath his name and breed:
OUT during the day.
Idiot! In the event that Sterling slipped past his broom and attacked, Bonsai would fly to the towel hutch in the hall where he could hide from the larger, stronger bird.

I walked into the hall by the downstairs bathroom and flipped on the light. Sure enough, there was a telltale gray feather in the topmost stack of towels from the last time Bonsai had sought refuge there.