A Bird's Eye View

It was time for morning tea. The dew was still fresh on the leaves that seemed even more brown than the day before. I wrapped my toes around my usual perch ready to tell all I'd seen yesterday. The girl in the red jacket finally kissed the boy next door. The annoying dog from the grey house got loose but, as much as I hoped they wouldn't, they coaxed him into the old van with a steak bone. We all hated how he barked whenever we came near. That was all I had but I couldn't wait to hear the other's gossip. Everyone was in their usual spot. Sparrow blended in with the leaves of a tree nearby. Her white chest the only evidence of her presence. Hummer fluttered through the garden below seemingly teleporting from one flower to the next. Wrestling around in the big house's bird bath, a blur of almost purple, were Jay and Cardinal. Hawk paraded on the church rooftop, chest out, haughty-looking as usual. I looked over to the house with the tall fence expecting to see Finch, barely awake as usual, struggling to balance himself atop one of the pickets. The white peak, however, poked up uninterrupted into the blush pink sky. Slightly annoyed by his consistent yet unpredictable ineptitude, I readied myself for my favorite part of our morning meeting; sparrows opening song. Hawk marched to the edge of the roof, ready to call the meeting to order. Just as she opened her beak a chaotic, squawking shadow appeared over the horizon. As it got closer, the hue of its feathers seemed to blend with the quarter risen sun. Finch. He tried to perch on his usual picket but to no avail. This time not due to fatigue, but he seemed so frazzled that he couldn't stop his wings from flapping. Obviously he'd gotten into the coffee the delivery guy left on the brick house's porch again. After a few seconds of unintelligible, high pitched blubbering it was clear that this was something much more serious. "The cul de sac!" was his only coherent utterance. As he took off in frenetic flight we didn't know why, but we knew we should follow.

When I saw it, my heart was so heavy I wasn’t sure I could stay aflight. Tall and boxy with a ramp extending into the garage, a moving truck invaded the usually unoccupied driveway. I sunk into a bush nearby in disbelief. I couldn't see or hear the other birds but their silence spoke volumes. The black and white house cast a shadow on the lawn as the sun rose behind it. The familiar striped curtains were gone and the view inside was of scattered paper and dust. Empty. Seeing her face was devastating. The yellow door creaked open, the welcome sign that usually adorned the front missing. She stepped out onto the light spot on the porch where the welcome mat once was. Her greying haired wisped about by the breeze, she took a deep breath as if to trap the memories in her lungs. She walked slowly down the stairs and toward the truck.

The thought hit me like lightening. The feeder! I darted to the back of the house. As if they'd read my mind, the other birds followed. It was still there. Six pieces of wood meticulously nailed together, the one on the front with a precisely cut hole. The red paint had started to fade from years of basking in the sun. Swinging ever so slightly from it's high branch, the few crumbs in the bottom danced left to right. I rested on the porch rail retrieving every memory I could. The cool mornings where she listened intently to our music while she drank her light tan coffee, smiling and sometimes whistling along. The anticipation of the freshly filled feeder each day that never failed us. The large ceramic water bowl, a mosaic of reds, yellows and oranges, that she set out on hot days to cool our feathers. My favorite was the special days when she made cookies or pies and threw out the crumbs for our evening snack. She rarely had visitors but she never seemed lonely. We were like her family, or at least we liked to think so. We heard the rumble and click of the truck door closing then the groan of the engine. As quickly as we could fly around front, the dreaded box on wheels was lurching out of the driveway with our friend’s car in tow.

The next few weeks were tough. There wasn't much to report for morning tea. Nothing that happened around the neighborhood seemed to matter much. Although, Hummers report of the bald man in the bungalow losing control of his lawn mower and being dragged about did garner a chuckle. Every morning we'd fly over to the cul de sac to find the black and white house, the lawn usually unkempt, empty. Today though, the grass was well manicured and a red and white "SOLD" sign was staked in the ground. We all imagined what the new owner would be like. Jay predicted an elderly couple, the wife with a knack for baking bread. Cardinal leaned more toward newlyweds who would, no doubt, be excited about the bird feeder in the back. Finch hoped for a single guy who left his food scraps around for the pickings. I imagined a family with children, a boy and a girl maybe. There was nothing like flying past a child and seeing his face glow with excitement. The little ones jumping, pointing and pulling at the seams of their parent’s shirt exuberantly screaming "boid" were the best. I could hear the tiny voices begging their parents to fill the feeder and debating whose turn it was this time. Excitement filled my hollow bones for the first time in weeks.

The black and white house stood untouched for several more days. The first thing that changed was the curtains. Sheer gray downstairs, a deep wine color in the upstairs windows on the right and the ones on the left were draped in white with a playful triangle pattern. There were kids! There were no overt signs of life until one afternoon when Sparrow and I decided on a random fly over. A boy, probably about 8, steered a metallic green bike around the semi circle in front of the house. We watched until we were dizzy and he seemed to be too. He hopped off the bike and carelessly let it fall onto the concrete. We followed him from above around the side of the house. With his head facing the sky and the water from the hose arching over his tongue, very little actually making it into his mouth, he spotted us. I waited for the glow but I was startled by what felt like rain on a cloudless day. I partially cleared my eyes with a wet wing to see the hose pointed in our direction. Cute. It was a rather warm Fall day. I figured he thought he was helping us cool off. The shaking of the branch beneath my feet and the loud thump signaled that this wasn't so innocent. We were under attack! The boy had a handful of rocks and he was hurling them, one by one, in our direction. We took off, narrowly dodging the projectiles, to safety.

Sparrow and I had plenty to report at morning tea the next day. Curiosity got the best of the group and we decided to go ahead with our routine morning visit to the house. We determined it best to be discreet. We flew in one by one and each found an inconspicuous spot to land. There was a black car parked at the edge of the driveway, an indicator that it didn't belong to someone who resided there. We sat quietly for what seemed like forever until a stout lady wearing a business suit and nametag opened and exited the yellow door. A much thinner lady followed and stood in the threshold.

“Thank you. I think we’ll have a court date soon. See you next week” the suited lady said as she made her way to her car.

Before the thin lady could reply, the boy emerged in the abundant space between her hips and the door frame and pushed his way onto the porch.

"And don't come back!" He yelled as the black car creeped out of the driveway.

"Cory!" She pleaded. The boy turned to her and exclaimed with anger I'd never seen from a body so small,

"Shut up. You're not my mom!"

She slowly closed the door. Within a few seconds the sheer curtains shifted and her tear soak face peaked through the window.

Whatever we chose to do next seemed wrong but remaining still felt the most reasonable. The boy drew circles with his finger in a small mound of dirt and pebbles at his feet. It didn't seem as though he'd be leaving that spot anytime soon. The leaves rustled on a branch above me. One of us was tired of waiting and deemed the risk of whatever the boy would do a lesser evil than sitting dormant any longer. A brown blur circled the house once and landed on the neighbors roof. Hawk, just as I'd suspected. This caught the boys attention.

"I hate birds!"

He searched for the nearest projectile but when nothing seemed to be suitable he took of in the Hawk's direction as though he could take off, ascend and bring him into submission.

"Go away!"

We all took flight with Hawk as our leader, trailed by angry insults and threats. Defeated, we called it a day.

I knew it was bad when Finch was the only one who showed up with a worm tucked in his beak. On rainy mornings like these we competed to bring the juiciest worm to morning tea and Finch, far from an early riser, was never the winner. Sparrow's song was dismal and short. There was only one topic at hand (we didn’t dare talk about how much we missed our friend). What was wrong with that kid? Disrespectful was Cardinal's take. Needed more discipline. Sparrow and Jay agreed and added that he'd be a menace to society if someone didn't get control of him soon. Hawk resolved that the child was just plain evil. A monster. I was unsettled somehow by these conclusions. There seemed to be more hiding behind those fiery eyes. None the less, our collective verdict was surrender. We'd stay as far away from the black and white house as possible. The boy was dangerous and it wasn't worth the risk of being hurt. We'd have to find another house with a feeder and crumb throwing, bird bath making, whistling sweet lady. Good luck.

Morning tea became futile. There was nothing worthy of talking or singing about without mornings at the black and white house to look forward to. There were fewer of us each day until the meetings were a thing of the past. I'd fly by the black and white house at a distance once and a while. It was mostly quiet. I'd often see the boy walking to or from school. He was always alone. The black car was parked at the end of the driveway every Wednesday morning. When I could get close enough to catch a glimpse of the boy he always seemed sadder on those days.

I'd had enough. The feeling that there was more to the boy than we could see pulled at my feathers incessantly. I needed to get closer. To learn more. The leaves were now mostly piles at the curbside. The bareness of the trees made my decision even more brash. Luckily today the triangle patterned curtains were open. I perched quietly on the window sill. There was an unmade bed, super hero posters on the wall and a closet with carelessly hung clothes. Across a sea of toys on the floor the boy sat at a kid’s size desk. He was sketching something with colored pencils. I shifted my angle until I saw what validated all I had been feeling. There was a shiny, 6 by 4 picture, propped up between the desk and the wall. On it were a slightly younger version of himself and a younger girl whose eyes remarkably resembled his. There was a tall woman, different than the thin lady in the yellow door, with each hand on one of the children's shoulders. Her facial features mirrored them both. The boy's left hand rested on a bird cage with a handwritten tag, clearly by a child, that said Kiwi and Mango. The two parrots inside seemed to smile at the camera as sincerely as the other family members beside them. The paper he was drawing on was damp with tears making his attempts to recreate the photo nearly futile.

Although I hadn't seen them in weeks, finding my friends wasn't hard. Cardinal and Jay usually hung out in near the pond. I could always hear Sparrow in the morning. Hummer was usually in the city garden and Finch frequented parks and elementary school picnic areas. To find hawk, well, I just needed to look up. It took some convincing but they all agreed to meet the next morning.

We skipped the pomp and circumstance and got right to it. I described everything I'd seen the day before. A collective disappointment descended upon the group. From our perspective, from the sky, it should have been easy to see the whole picture. The boy was far from a monster. He was a kid and we were reminders of his deepest loss. We couldn't fix it but we hoped the people he encountered in life would take a step back before passing judgement, a bird's eye view if you will, and see the pain behind those fiery eyes. We hoped, instead of asking "what's wrong with him" as we had, they'd instead ask "what happened to him" and operate in love and understanding. The boys future depended on it.

From that day on morning tea became routine again. Our shared lesson seemed to bring us closer. We’ve even gotten to know the nice lady in the blue colonial who often throws out crumbs from her fresh baked pies. I often fly by the black and white house. I haven’t gotten too close yet but I have noticed that the feeder is painted a fresh bright red. It’s a start.