Julia Hates Birds
From the start, I felt Magnus the Cockatoo and I weren’t going to get along. He was loud, secreted a weird white powder, and I could feel his eyes follow me any time we were in the same room.
However, I was also a low-income college student who had graduated with English: Creative Writing right before the holidays started, so any income that avoided crowded malls was a win. I had scoured Care.com and landed the job after an initial introduction that taught me several things (1) the owner wrote government contracts, (2) though I did not know anything about birds, cockatoos were big enough to reach my knee, and (3) I was free to raid the fridge. The fridge won me over and I was ready to spend two weeks with a cockatoo.
Though I hadn’t had any previous experience with birds, her instructions were simple: take out Magnus for a daily poop. She taught me how to offer the bird my hand to perch on top of as I carried him outside. Otherwise, she said, I could keep Magnus inside the cage if I wanted.
So, I dutifully took out Magnus every day and was weirdly charmed. The toddler inside me rejoiced with the thought of being a wild animal trainer at least once a day. However, Magnus did not like being in the cage. He squawked constantly when inside it. Which would have been okay except that he squawked constantly outside it too.
I suppose Magnus was done with this subpar stranger because one morning as I set him back inside the cage, he refused to get off.
Instead, Magnus chomped down with the biting force of 350 pounds where my index finger met my hand. I screamed and waved my hand to get him off. He dug in and once he was satisfied, flew away. As blood streamed down my arm from the wound, I did what any sane human being would do: I ran downstairs to the safety of a bird-free zone.
While washing the blood off my hands and waiting for the bleeding to subside I realized: the bird had my phone. The bird ruled the roost and I was a college graduate in their pajamas now hiding out in a basement over Christmas break.
How would I get it back in the cage?
I snuck up the stairs into the kitchen to see if Magnus was in his cage. The bird stared with the phone in sight behind it; I went back down and after sitting, standing, pacing back and forth, I walked to the neighbors with the self-awareness to know that no one wants to see a scruffy house/bird sitter in pajamas with unassembled curls.
How would I introduce myself?
The neighbor was a woman in a sunhat working her garden.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she said.
“So, I am from next door and I am house and parrot-sitting. Ummm, the bird has my phone.”
She blinked. I continued. “Anyways, it bit me, it’s out of its cage, and since the bird has my phone, I was wondering if I could look up how to get it back.”
“Excuse me?”
I gave up. “Please may I use your Google?”
“Okay,” she said.
I could tell she wanted me off her property. I also sensed the real possibility she thought I was a homeless woman, but she handed me her phone anyways.
I looked up bird centers.
“May I call a bird center?”
“Sure.”
I dialed the nearest one and explained the situation to the receptionist. “I’m sorry but we can’t give advice on how to get a bird back in its cage.”
“Great.”
Google suggested convincing the creature to perch at the end of a long pole and sticking it back in the cage. Or putting a blanket over it to trick it into thinking that it was nighttime.
I handed the phone back. She nodded and went back to her gardening. Maybe if she ignored me long enough I would disappear. Wish granted.
I went back into the house and shut the door behind me as I went in search of a broom to arm myself before going back upstairs. No broom anywhere. I scrounged around and came up with a child’s toy pony before donning some rubber gloves from under the kitchen sink as if they were boxing gloves and walked up the stairs. I held the head in my hands with the bottom part firmly in the cockatoo’s range.
Though I was taller, Magnus stared down at me. I retreated downstairs and returned with a towel. All I needed was to get my phone from the coffee table.
Edging around the wall of the kitchen en route to the living room, I maintained eye contact with the bird to retrieve my phone, avoiding the poop randomly scattered about on the floor, some countertops, and kitchen chairs. My strategy was that it couldn’t kill me while staring me straight in the eyes. It must love some humans and I reasoned that my eyes would remind it that like the owner, I was an authority figure.
The bird’s eyes flicked away for just a moment as I reached the living room. My eyes darted to the prize, waiting for Magnus’ head to turn and my bandaged hand throbbed. The head turned. I threw the towel over it and even that couldn’t cover the whole creature.
Once I saw the towel couldn’t tame it, I went to the phone like it was a life raft and grabbed it before running to the nearest room with a door. Then I did what any fresh-out-of-college twenty-something would do. I called my best friend Helen.
Helen was the kid in elementary school who lost the class hamster. Her family got cats; the kids were allergic. A friend asked her to look after his bunny and she feared for her safety. So in my wisdom and faith that God has blessed Helen with an affinity for animals, I decided the best course of action was to shove myself in a closet and immediately called her for guidance.
To be fair, it was a rough time for us both: she was wiping children’s asses as a babysitter while parents instinctively knew I would not cut it, so I got stuck with animals instead.
“What’s going on? I’m working,” she said.
“The bird is flying around, it’s out of its cage, and it bit me. What do I do?”
“Kill the bird! Kill the bird!” It was all the tact I should have expected.
“No, I can’t kill it. I’m getting paid.”
“Kill the bird!”
Dammit. I hung up. Wait, the owner.
I called the owner. No answer.
I called my at-the-time off-again boyfriend who I was snuggling with on a regular basis. Multiple times until he picked up.
“I’m at work!”
“The bird is flying around, it’s out of its cage, and it bit me. What do I do?”
“I don’t know, call the owner.”
“I tried!”
“Okay, well, I’m at work soooo — stop calling.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Cool, so you wanna hang out later?”
“Bye.”
That was rude. I thought. I was on my own. I turned on the closet light. It was a linen closet. Maybe all the bird needed was a bigger blanket to cover it…
I lurched around for a blanket and found something that would work, took a deep breath, and cracked open the door. It was in front of me on the ground like a prehistoric raptor come to life, eyes watching me. I had not appreciated the beauty of Jurassic Park until this moment. I busted out of the closet, threw the blanket over the bird, and pinned it to the ground. Carefully, pulling the blanket back so I wasn’t hurting him, I lifted him from the ground, put him in the cage and quickly shut and locked the door.
I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning shit from the kitchen. The living room, fortunately, was unscathed.
A few hours later the owner called and I said the bird didn’t want to go back in.
She chuckled, “Well, I guess you figured it out and showed him who’s boss then.”
I suppose I impressed her because four months later she hired me to work in an entry level job helping write satellite contracts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). I was thrilled. It was an office job with people I could reason with. No more prehistoric eyes or claws waiting to attack me, no more gig jobs, no more bird bitings.
Until I received an e-mail a month into my job.
As it turns out, NOAA has a huge Canadian geese problem with annual e-mails and trainings to beware of geese. But the trainings were too late.
For the remainder of my time as a government employee I left the building feeling their eyes watching me. And though I left years ago, I sometimes still do.
**Note: Some exaggeration is used in this essay, but a vast majority of events described is not an exaggeration.**
