I wanna get outta here!

I wanna get outta here!

Adam sat on a branch up in the gum tree, breaking off twigs and chucking them at the hens in the chicken run below. They were running around, flapping their wings, cackling, and squawking like mad. 

“Leave the chooks alone Adam,’ yelled his mum from the vegetable garden, ‘and come and give me a hand!”

He reluctantly lowered his legs to the ground and walked over to his mother. Sixteen years old, tall, and gawky, he was home from school because of the corona virus. And he was bored stiff. Bored with schoolwork, bored with living in the boring country, bored with helping out with home chores. 

Once again, he wished he had a motor bike, like his elder brother, so could just take off like him, down the boring road and never have to see Burragong, New South Wales again.

“Stop your dreaming and grab that bucket. Give the ‘vege’ scraps to the chickens, instead of tormenting them. And don’t just throw it at them, spread it around!”  Mum’s voice had reached screech-owl levels.

“Yeah, yeah, Achtung,” he muttered.

As he was dutifully spreading the vegetable scraps among the chickens there was a loud flapping of wings and a sulphur-crested cockatoo flew down and sat on the chicken house roof. It looked at Adam and did a little dance on the spot.

“Hello Cocky”, said Adam. It was the usual thing you said to cockatoos, but to his surprise, the bird looked up, cocked his head on one side and replied, “Hello Cocky”.

“Oh, wow, where did you learn that?” said Adam.

“Well, actually, from horrible Professor Bingham and his horrible wife.” “I’m a fugitive from tyranny,” said Cocky, in a rather cultured accent.

Adam nearly fell over. “Y-y-you can talk?!” he got out.

“Y-Y-yes, I c-c-can,. So what?”

Adam’s questions tumbled out of him, are they looking for you, why did you go away from them, where did you live, how did you learn to talk, do other cockatoos talk too.”

“I lived with those creepy people in Mount Wallaga. The professor was a doctor of natural Science, so they kept me a virtual prisoner, taught me how to speak, how to do a little act. Their aim was to make a fortune from me, but I spoiled their game. Every time they took me to an agent or tried to film me, I just acted like any other dumb cockatoo and squawked a load of nonsense. I swore a bit, too. In the end they stuck me in a cage and put me in with the pigs for punishment.”

“So, how did you escape?”

“One of the pigs opened the cage and let me go. They are highly intelligent creatures, you know?”

“Sure.  Is it okay to call you Cocky?” asked Adam.

“Better than Theodore. That’s what my jailers called me.”

Cocky screeched loudly as Adam’s mother Val approached the coop. “Hey, please don’t give me away to your mum. I’m just a dumb bird, OK?”.

“What’s this, talking to a cockie?’ laughed Val.

“Yeah, cute, isn’t he?” said Adam.

“Seems tame”.

“Just friendly.”

“Dinner’s soon, so come in, now”.

Adam whispered to Cocky, “See you soon. I’ll bring you some food.” Aloud, he called “Bye, Cocky”. Cocky answered with a screech.

After dinner, Adam took some bird seed, left over from the last parrot they had had. Abbott had been its name, after a previous prime minister, because it talked a load of garbage. The cockatoo was sitting on a branch, patiently waiting.

“Mind if I stay here for a while?’ he asked.

“Oh, please. I’d love you to stay. I’ll keep your secret. Nobody needs know.”

“Good. I’m okay getting my own food, though, so I’ll just hang around for a while. I’ve flown about eighty kilometres today and my arms are dropping off,” he joked, wiggling his wings.

And so, began an unusual relationship, between Adam and Cocky.  Cocky stayed in the big old gum tree that shaded the chook-house and flew around most of the day, looking for food. He didn’t go near the house, or wreck the flyscreens, or the guttering, like so many other destructive cockatoos. He picked pegs out of the peg box and handed them to Adam when he was told to hang out the washing. He sat on his shoulder when they went for a walk around the property, and they had long conversations.

Adam told him how he wanted to leave home. Legally, he could do so, but was worried about what his parents would say. He already knew that his father, Bill, wanted him to leave school at the end of the year, then stay to work on the farm. At best, he would send him to agricultural college.

Most of the sheep farmers in the district shared the same problem. Very few of their children wanted to stay to work on the land. They headed as soon as they could for the big city, some for university, others to get a job, share a flat and live! Adam moodily said that his mum and dad would stop him.

“They’re gonna ruin my life,” he said.

“They probably love you, you know”, said Cocky. “Humans don’t push their babies out of the nest. Usually, they like their children to stay close, and visit them often. Most of them, anyway”

‘So, don’t you ever see your parents?”

Cocky did a bird equivalent of a snort. “I wouldn’t know them if we sat on the same branch of that big old gum tree there. We like to be in a flock, though, find a mate, maybe. Seen any good-looking lady birds in the flocks around here?”

“How would I know what a good-looking female bird looks like? I can’t tell a male from a female, anyway.”

Cocky shook his head. “Your education is sadly lacking, my friend. I’d better stick around to tell you the facts of life. You see…” And the first lesson began.

Later in bed, Adam chuckled to himself. He had a wild, English-speaking cockatoo, teaching him the facts about the birds and the bees as it had never been told before.

Next day, he was busy, helping Bill round up the sheep for shearing. His father had bawled him out the evening before, for not doing his share of the work. About time he started to ‘earn his crust.’ Bill had got particularly angry when Adam made a reference to slave labour and is this why he was born, to have to work or he wouldn’t be fed?

Cocky kept his distance, occasionally flying off, or screeching from the treetops. Adam thought he was teasing him. “Ha ha, I’m free, you’re not!”

Later in the evening Adam went to their usual meeting place at a hilly part of the farm. From there he could keep an eye on the house below and spot anyone coming up the hill. Cocky was introducing him to philosophy.

“What is your idea of a good life, Adam?” he asked.

“A good life – what do you mean, doing good things for others, or having a good time? If I had a choice, it’d be having a good time in Sydney! Why do you ask?”

“Well, people, like philosophers have been asking that question since the time of the ancient Greeks. Ever heard of Plato?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“What sort of education have you had if you haven’t heard of Plato? What about Socrates?”

“Oh, that’s the guy who was made to take poison, a hemlock drink. Heard of him, so what?”

“Well, Socrates for one, said the unexamined life is not worth living. He wanted the young people to wake, up, start questioning everything. Politics, the gods. After all the gods used to change their minds and even killed each other.”

“Well, I question why I should spend the rest of my life, doing what my parents want me to do.”

“Good start. Now think about what you could do. What you think you’d like to do. Although it’s good to try to make other people, like your parents, happy, to help them have a good life, you must have one too. I’d wait a few years before you make up your mind, though, Adam. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

“Okay, Mr Philosopher. I’ll try that.”

He went home to help his mother hang out what seemed like a thousand white nylon curtains that she’d taken down from every window in the house. Then he’d helped wash all the windows. What a great little domestic servant I am, he thought, I’m really earning my crust here.  When he had a place of his own, he would never, ever have curtains at the windows. Nor would he have a vegetable garden, or bleating sheep! He only hoped Cocky would stay with him wherever he went.

That night, in the quiet of the bedroom Adam could see Cocky, at a distance, sitting on a branch, with his head tucked under his wing. As he was watching, the bird suddenly became alert and stretched his head and looked towards the house. He ruffled his feathers as if about to take flight.

Adam saw what he was looking at. There was a man in the garden – was it Dad? No. Too short. The man was making his way stealthily towards the house. He was holding what looked like a shotgun. Adam froze, listening. He heard the back door open. 

Afraid to alert the intruder, he trod as softly as he could to wake his parents in the bedroom at the end of the landing. At the first sound of a creak on the stairs, he hurried to his parents’ bedroom and shook his father awake.

“Dad,” he whispered, there’s someone coming up the stairs.” His father leapt out of bed and grabbed his shotgun, as his mother, hand over her mouth, tiptoed after them as they went out the door. Before they had gone even two steps, there was an almighty racket. Screams and unearthly screeches from the stairwell, followed by a crashing and cursing.

They raced downstairs. The din was extraordinary. There was a man, curled up on the floor, quivering with fear, his hands held up in defence. A shotgun lay some distance away and there was a ghostly apparition, flying above and screaming down at him, “Stay down! Don’t move! Move or you die!”

It was Cocky, draped in Mother’s nylon curtains, looking for all the world like a scene from Ghostbusters, and scaring the life out of not only the intruder, but mum and dad, too. Nevertheless, all ran into the kitchen.

“What the hell is this?” cried his father, grabbing the shotgun as the intruder reached for it. Waving it around, he didn’t know who or what to shoot first.

“Dad! It’s Cocky! Don’t hit him.” Adam cried.

Bill stood over the man, shotgun in hand and forced to get up and walk to the pantry, then locked him in. He then turned to the ‘ghost’, hovering up near the ceiling and pointed the gun at Cocky.

“Well, that’s all the thanks I get,” said Cocky, swiftly evaded him and flying to rest on an overhead beam. He ripped off the curtain, tossed it to the floor and preened his feathers.

Bill’s mouth dropped open. “A bloody talking cockatoo?”

“Wait, Cocky’s my friend, Dad. He saved us. I can explain it.”

Everyone calmed down a little, the police were called and given an untruthful story of the events when they arrived. Dad was praised but cautioned for his bravery in facing an armed intruder, and Cocky remained silent on top of the dresser, unnoticed by the officers. All was explained when the police left.

Cocky apparently had flown down as soon as he saw the intruder go in the back door, which, country-style was never locked. He had swooped down, grabbed the curtains from the line and thrown them over his head, then flown screeching like a banshee, straight at the man’s head as he’d started to climb the stairs. He’d fallen back, dropping the gun in his fright, as the family arrived on the scene.

Like Adam, initially, it took a little while for Val and Bill to believe they were not in the Twilight Zone, having a conversation with a cockatoo, but eventually, Cocky told them his story. He also asked them not to reveal his whereabouts, which they agreed to. 

As a reward for his heroic acting performance, and saving the family home from invasion, Cocky gained an important place in the family. He came and went as he pleased, he had his own spot on the back veranda, but often shared Adam’s bedroom, and spent every evening with the family, watching TV or with Adam, playing games on the Net. 

He also was a great help in keeping crows away from the sheep and foxes from the chickens. One extremely loud telling off from Cocky was enough to scare them off for good. He handed pegs to mother, tools to father, opened the gate for the tractor, collected the mail from the mailbox, and a hundred other useful things.

Adam returned reluctantly to school but found a new interest in a girl called Clare. With encouragement from Cocky, Adam involved himself more with work around the farm. He had an entertaining companion all the time he was working, and his mother and father were happy. He’d found the good life

Barbara Cattunar

No. of words: 2,259