Help!
Everyone, drop whatever you are doing this instant, grab the nearest coil of rope, a few lengths of sturdy chain and several pairs of handcuffs, if you happen to have any lying around left over from your work or perverted sex play. Perhaps a few sturdy gags would be useful too, in case I could manage, though properly restrained, to inch my way to the phone and activate it with my teeth and tongue. I have just noticed myself galloping off in a very dangerous direction and must be stopped by any and every means possible.
"WTF" ??, you say, "what has that crazy broad gotten herself into now?" Well, I am not into it yet, but I know the signs and it means Trouble Right Here in River City.....also in Valley Village, otherwise known by its less snooty inhabitants as North Hollywood. This is one of those cases where I find myself giving myself advice by saying, "Now, if I were you, Lois...." But I do not seem to be listening. Dammit, I never do.
Oh, hell.....here's the straight poop......it all began a few days ago when I went out to the front porch upon arising ......the porch wherein the nitely free buffet is set up for the night critters....... because I saw something a bit peculiar lying there.....a leaf perhaps...no.....horrors, a dead bird obviously left in generous payment for his buffet meal by one of my nitely cat visitors. Nature can be so cruel though I had to appreciate the gesture. Sorrowfully I picked it up and gazed in wonder at its beauty. It was quite small, bigger than a hummingbird but not by much and I decided it might be a type of finch which I see passing through my yard fairly often tweeting their lovely high pitched tweets. With a beautiful pale yellow belly and shades of pale green here and there....I had never seen anything quite like it.....so after being quite sure it could not be revived by a drop of brandy or mouth to mouth, I carried it indoors and put it into a baggie and into the freezer for further study later.
And then began the endless hours spent on Google doing ever more dangerous searches. Innocently starting out with merely trying to identify it among "finches" I determined that the closest I could come was perhaps a wild bird called a "goldfinch". And then my eye strayed to a sidebar item which said.....gasp..... Finches as Pets, and then to a more insidious and fatal entry, "Finches For Sale". Today, when my back was turned, I found my incorrigible self calling one or two of the phone numbers in my local area to find out about what they had to offer and for how much. To make matters worse, I spent the afternoon perusing listings for cages and pondering possible sites for setting up same to enable me to watch the little darlings.......that I have absolutely no intention of acquiring, you understand. None, Nada, Zilch!
During this investigation I have learned some interesting bits of info like the fact that, rather than an upright cage they require a horizontal cage because Finches need to fly for exercise and it needs to be in a more or less horizontal flight path. Nothing was said about landing lights or a control tower, so I assume the birds take care of those details for themselves. There was one article that put me off a bit by mentioning that, in addition to seed and things like hard boiled eggs with the shells mashed up for calcium, Finches need some protein like insects or live little worms. But other articles calmed my fears by assuring me that there were pellets available that provided all that sort of thing in a less wriggly way.
I was also warned that one species, called the Zebra Finch I believe, can be a sort of Nazi of the bird world, so vilely aggressive as to kill all the other Finches within his view and flying space, an event too dreadful to contemplate. But yet another article assured me that this can be solved by having at least 6 Finches in the cage. Perhaps the little fucker can count and knows that 5 against one is not a percentage in his favor. Who knows.
All fascinating stuff......but, of course, this is all academic because I would have to be totally out of my friggin' mind to even consider adding birds to my menagerie, wouldn't I? And even if I were considering it, all of you good people would grab your ropes and chains and handcuffs and gags and come to my rescue by restraining me in my madness before I did any real damage to myself, wouldn't you? Of course you would, so we can all sleep soundly tonight.
.......Oh, um, by the way.....have you ever or do any of you now keep Finches??? Just askin'.......
The New Yorker covers: September 26, 2011
3 hours ago
