One Frozen Bird

‘Thanks for this, Amber,’ George said. He was struggling to get through the door of my flat with what looked like a massive box wrapped in a bedsheet. It had to be the parrot’s cage, from the squawks coming from within, but it was the size of a dozen wide-screen TVs packed together in a giant cube.

‘Wow, that’s a big cage,’ I said, reviewing the space where I’d planned for it to go. If I put that cage on the table, I’d be eating dinner off my lap till George returned from holiday.

‘They need space,’ George said. ‘And Sid’s a big bird. Magnificent old thing. Wait till you see him.’

The cage was settled on the living room table, with all my sewing stuff swept to one side in a muddle I would never untangle. The sheet came off and Sid and I came eye to eye. Literally. He was huge. I took a step backwards, unsure whether the bars would hold against that massive beak. He had grey and scarlet plumage, and a white outline to his dark eyes. They say that birds are descended from dinosaurs, and I could see the resemblance. Imagine a T-rex staring you straight in the eye.

‘Gotta go,’ George said. ‘Cheers again, Sis.’

He was halfway out the door already.

‘If he gets sick, where do I take him?’

‘Vet,’ George said. ‘Left you instructions. Flight leaves in two hours, really gotta go.’

‘Bye,’ I said, as the door slammed behind George. My flat was silent again, except for a tearing sound from Sid’s cage. Was he being sick or ripping out his own feathers?

Neither. He had pinned an A4 page onto the floor of his cage with his talons and was tearing long strips off it. Half of it had gone already. Close printed… the instruction sheet George had left on the table. How to care for an African Grey Parrot like Sid.

Sid stopped tearing long enough to eye me up.

‘Pieces of meat,’ he said.

‘You mean pieces of eight,’ I corrected him.

‘Raaak,’ Sid said. ‘Pieces of meat.’

I reached in through the bars to retrieve the instructions and he bit me, hard. I jerked my hand back and almost put it in my mouth to suck the blood away, then thought of parrots and psittacosis and mites. I reached for the first aid kit instead.

‘Pieces of meat,’ Sid observed, before tearing another strip off the instruction sheet.

‘George, you arsehole,’ I said as I strapped up my injuries. ‘You get the holiday and I get the bird. Perfect.’

African Grey parrots don’t really sleep, I think, just doze. His eyes would open when I came into the living room, and he’d start on me. The evening George flew out to St Lucia, I got dressed up for a date with Marcus. My third date with Marcus, and the last assessment before I invited him home after dinner. I wore the tarty dress. Short, low cut, frankly pretty chilly but doing an important job of signalling the next step.

‘Nice arse,’ Sid said, making kissy sounds. I shot back to the bedroom and got changed into a pair of black trousers and flat-heel shoes. Sid wolf-whistled me all the way to the front door. I arrived at the restaurant in a foul mood and dressed like I was going to a funeral, and I couldn't shake off the grumps. Marcus and I parted on frosty terms after the meal. I gather he was expecting bare flesh and a night of passion in my flat. I can’t stand men who think they can go Dutch on three dinners and roll you into bed.

I slammed the door as I came in, and I heard Sid’s ‘Raaak!’ from the living room.

‘Shut up!’ I yelled at him.

‘Shut up!’ he screeched back.

You can’t outshout a parrot. I sat and glared at him, and he rolled in his water bowl and flicked water everywhere. It sounded as if he was chuckling. Joke’s on me; thirty years old and spending Christmas week in a freezing cold flat with only a talking bird for company.

Sid woke me in the night. First there was a constant rattling sound from the living room. Just after midnight, he started to call. Pathetic little cries at first, then louder. Then at 2 am, words.

‘I’m bloody freezing!’ he shrieked.

He had a point. The wind had turned easterly, and the building was drafty. Heat leeched out of the flat within an hour of the heating going off at night. I solved the problem by getting under the duvet at ten and not getting out again till seven, by which time I’d had the heating going for an hour and the risk of frostbite was medium to low.

‘I’m bloody freeeezing!’ Sid moaned. Through the thin walls, I heard next door’s bed creak as the occupant turned over abruptly and I swear I heard a tut.

I hopped out of bed – Sid had a point, it was arctic – and hit the button for another hour’s heating. I looked in on him. He was shivering theatrically, opening and closing his beak as if he wanted to say something.

‘You’ll bankrupt me,’ I hissed. Sid closed his eyes and moaned quietly.

In the morning, he was leaping around like a kitten while I dragged around getting ready for work. I spent a day at work slugging down coffee, with my lunchbreak spent sitting in my car trying to catch a short nap. It didn’t help that I came home to find Sid snoozing on his perch. His eyes flew open as I came in, but I wasn’t fooled.

‘Honey, I’m home!’ he yelled.

‘You’re nobody’s honey,’ I said, grumpily. ‘You look like I feel.’

Cruel, I know, but he did look like someone had been pulling his feathers out at an angle. Hard not to smile, though, as he did this silly dance that reminded me of Billy Elliott tap-dancing down the street in a temper.

‘Don’t clap!’ Sid shrieked, dancing like Gene Kelly on drugs. ‘Just throw money!’

I laughed, and Sid finished with; ‘Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week!’

Direct quote from Paul Bettany in ‘A Knight’s Tale’. Made sense. George was into his movies. Sid must have sat listening to films all evening for months.

I fed Sid and then myself; wondered whether to text Marcus and decided that anyone who scowled at a woman who chose to wear trousers rather than freeze her kneecaps off wasn’t worth my time. Frankly, Sid was better company than he was.

‘You’re alright, you know that?’ I offered Sid a finger to nibble at. He leaned forward slowly, then dived in fast and nipped a lump of skin off. I yelped and he laughed.

‘Pieces of meat!’ he jeered.

‘George,’ I muttered to myself, reaching for the first aid kit. ‘You arsehole.’

The second night was a repeat of the first night. The gentle rattling. Then the moaning. Then the 2 am shriek; ‘I’m bloody freezing!’

I scooted out of bed, wincing as my bare feet hit the floor – wood, so trendy, and so warm in the summer – and scurried into the living room to put the heating on for another hour. Sid was standing on his perch, shivering so hard that the whole cage was rattling.

‘I’m bloody freezing,’ Sid said, at half his normal volume. For a moment, I felt sorry for him. He looked bedraggled, his feathers sticking out worse than ever.

‘Heating’s on now,’ I soothed him. ‘Won’t be long. Feel it warming up?’

‘I’m bloody freezing,’ Sid repeated. He shook himself and began to pull at his feathers.

‘Don’t do that, kid,’ I said. He continued to pick, hauling at a stray feather until it came out. He began picking at the next feather. I had visions of handing George a cage with a plucked parrot in it next Thursday. I tapped on Sid’s bars. He stopped picking at his feather and watched me.

How to entertain a bored parrot. Hmm. I began to sing, tentatively at first, starting with ‘Silent Night’ and going on to ‘Old MacDonald Had A Farm’, ‘I’m Only Human' and ‘Yesterday’, finishing up with ‘The Skye Boat Song’. Sid had stopped shivering by the time I’d finished, and was singing the words back to me. I hit the heating button for another hour, which would have the flat warm enough for him till the heating went on at five, and went back to bed.

‘You wake me again, you little jerk, and I’ll roast you for Christmas dinner,’ was my parting shot. ‘Let’s see how you deal with that!’

‘Now,’ Sid replied, and I turned to check it wasn’t actually Alan Rickman on my table; ‘I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.’

George and his movie addiction. ‘George, you arsehole,’ I muttered.

Friday morning, I left the TV on to keep Sid amused. I sleepwalked through work, promising myself a Saturday of snoozing. When I stumbled in through the door that evening, all I could think of was an hour’s nap before dinner. When I opened the living room door, all I could think of was George’s face when I told him that Sid was dead.

Sid was lying on the floor of his cage, one wing spread out and eyes closed. I imagined him falling off his perch and dying all alone.

‘Oh, Sid!’ I said. ‘Oh, you poor lad.’

He opened his eyes. ‘I’m bloody freezing,’ he said faintly, and shut his eyes again.

I froze too, then. Only the loud thumping on the door got me moving. Sid rolled over and opened his beak silently as I ran to the door and opened it. A man in his thirties was leaning on the doorframe, face grim.

‘Hi,’ the man said. ‘Friendly request; Can you please keep the noise down at 2 am? I can hear you through the walls, and I have to be at work by seven.’

‘Bloody free-ee-eezing,’ Sid called.

The man pushed past me and strode into my living room.

‘Hey there, old chap,’ he said. ‘You’re a handsome fella! What’s wrong with you?’

‘Bloody freezing,’ Sid muttered. His wing flexed and then he lay still. The man grabbed the cage and started out into the corridor.

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘That’s my parrot!’

‘Follow him, then,’ he called, opening the door to the flat next to mine.

I ran in there after him. It was warmer than my flat, and noisier too. A pair of budgies hopped and tweeted in a cage on his windowsill and a hamster rolled a treadmill around and around.

‘Welcome to the zoo,’ the man said. ‘Refugees from the practice.’ He put Sid’s cage gently on the table and pulled on a pair of leather gloves. ‘Nigel takes the dogs, Jenny takes the cats and I get the ones that fit into a flat without alerting the landlord.’

‘Practice?’ I asked. Sid was rolling onto his front, trying to get up.

‘I’m a vet,’ the man said. ‘If anyone can’t or won’t take care of their pet after we’ve treated them, the vets and nurses offer them a home. Hamlet over there got left behind because he’s old; parents said they’d rather buy a new hamster and tell their daughter this one had died. And I said that every creature deserves a chance, and he came home with me.’ He opened the door of Sid’s cage.

‘Careful,’ I said, but he’d reached in and grabbed Sid by the back of his neck before I could say; ‘He bites.’

He didn’t. The vet pulled him out and stood him on the table, gripping the back of his neck firmly. Sid stood still while the vet checked him over, purring like a cat.

‘And what's your name?’ the vet asked.

‘Amber Churchill,’ I said. ‘I live next door.’

The vet turned to me and blinked. ‘I was asking the patient,’ he said.

‘Pieces of meat!’ Sid piped up.

‘Watch out,’ I warned the vet. ‘He means it.’ I held up my injured hands, but the vet’s attention was on Sid.

‘Your heating goes on and off, doesn’t it?’ he asked me. I assumed he was asking me this time. ‘Very bad for parrots. They need a constant temperature, preferably warm rather than hot or cool. And company or entertainment, or they’ll pull their feathers out.’ He stroked Sid and tugged loose a wayward feather while he did.

‘I keep turning it back on,’ I said miserably. ‘But I don’t earn a lot, and… it isn’t my parrot. It’s my brother’s. He’s in the Caribbean for a week and he left Sid with me. And Sid ate the instructions George left me, so I didn’t know how to take care of him.’

‘Sid, eh?’ the vet said.

‘After Sid Vicious,’ I said. ‘I can see why, now.’

The vet returned Sid to his cage and closed the door gently. Sid shook himself, then began to sing, lifting his wicked claws in turn like a dancer and swaying from side to side.

‘My bonnie lies over the ocean,’ Sid sang. ‘My bonnie lies over the sea…’

‘They’re smart birds,’ the vet said. ‘He probably does know his man has left him, and he doesn’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll come back. He’s probably upset and lonely, he’s cold and he’s living in a strange place with a person he doesn’t know. You’d bite, if that was you.’

I was crying properly by now. ‘I thought he was dead,’ I said. ‘I tried – I left the TV on for him today to keep him company.’

‘I know, the vet said. ‘I heard him through the wall at lunchtime calling the Teletubbies “fat bastards”. He’s fine, just a bit chilly, but can I make you an offer? Let Sid stay here? My heating runs all the time for the budgies’ sake. I think Sid will be safer in the warm, and amused enough by Hamlet and the budgies to leave his remaining feathers alone.’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, wiping my face. ‘What do I owe you?’

‘Bring in his feed and we’ll call it quits,’ the vet said. He held out his hand to shake. ‘I’m Sid, by the way. Sid Grey.’

At the end of the week, George returned to collect his parrot. Unlike me, George was relaxed and tanned. I handed Sid’s cage back to him without a word.

‘Brilliant, thanks a bunch, sis – aw, you pleased to see me Sid?’

Sid regarded George through half closed eyes.

‘George,’ Sid said, in a perfect imitation of my voice; ‘You arsehole.’

George’s face dropped.

‘Merry Christmas, Sid,’ I said. ‘What are you having for Christmas dinner?’

‘Pieces of meat,’ Sid said, clacking his beak at George.

‘Um,’ George said. ‘I forgot to ask – I’m booked in at a local restaurant for Christmas dinner. If you fancy joining me, I could ask…?’

‘Thanks, but no,’ I said. ‘I’m cooking for me and the guy next door. He’s on duty in the morning, so he won’t get time to cook for himself.’

George grinned. ‘Good looking bloke?’

‘Nice arse,’ Sid replied for me, and I couldn’t disagree.