Birdy

the door, and into her new house. She flies from my finger onto one of the perches and flies back and forth all over the cage. She tries the tree and eats from the new dishes on the floor. She takes a bath. While she’s still wet, she comes over and sits on my knee, sprinkling me with water when she shakes. It’s a terrific place for a bird.
    I still have twenty dollars left from magazine selling. Paying off my share of the ninety-two dollars to my parents took the rest. I want to buy a male for Birdie and I want a first-class bird, a real flier.
    On Saturdays, I start going to different bird places on my bike. I carry Birdie with me in a small traveling cage. I could take her on my shoulder, but you never know when you’ll see a cat or a sparrow hawk.
    Besides Mrs Prevost, there’re other people who sell birds and live near enough. The biggest is Mr Tate. He has six or seven hundred birds. He’s a short man who’s almost deaf although he isn’t very old. He wears a hearing aid and is married but I never see any children. It’s strange that a man who can’t hear should be raising singing canaries. It’s like Beethoven.
    Birds are Mr Tate’s business and all he knows or cares about is production and how much they cost. He has large flight cages filled with birds and tremendous batteries of breeding cages. He breeds two females on a male to cut down feed costs. He thinks I’m peculiar bringing Birdie with me but he doesn’t mind.
    I stand in front of the male cage and take out Birdie so she can see. She flies against the side of the cage and some males come over to visit. A few sing to her or try to feed her. I watch but there aren’t any I like especially.
    I’m looking for a green male because the books say you should breed a yellow bird to a dark bird for good feather quality. Two yellow birds give young with thin, ragged, under-developed feathers and two darks give thick, short bunchy feathers. I feel I’ll know the right bird when I see him and so will Birdie.
    Another grower near by is a lady who only has about fifty breeding birds. She’s Mrs Cox. Mr Tate has his birds in his back yard, but Mrs Cox has hers in a covered back porch. She likes her birds and knows each one. She’s like Mrs Prevost; she tells me which of her females are good mothers and which males are good fathers. She knows who all the mothers and fathers of all the birds are. Listening to her is like listening to somebody talk about people in a small town. Sometimes she even whispers when she tells me about some particular bird which did something she thinks is wrong. She has a name for every bird. She’s glad I brought Birdie with me to help select a male; she says Birdie can fly free in the cage with the females.
    The males are in one half of the flight cage and the females in the other. There’s a wire partition between them. Mrs Cox says she watches the birds and when two birds show they love each other, she puts them into a breeding cage. Listening to her is like reading Gone With the Wind or something. She points out all the flirtings going on and which bird is after which; when you listen for a while, you begin to believe it .
    Mrs Cox doesn’t use any breeding system. Her only rule is she won’t let brothers and sisters from the same nest mate; it’s in the Bible, she tells me. In her breeding cages she uses one male to a female. She thinks Mr Tate isn’t very nice the way he does it. She talks half of one whole afternoon just about that.
    Mrs Cox and Mrs Prevost are friends. Mrs Cox recognized Birdie immediately as one of Mrs Prevost’s birds. Sometimes the two of them exchange birds to get new blood in the aviary. They’re a lot alike, except Mrs Cox is skinny.
    Mrs Cox says I can leave Birdie in the female cage and visit whenever I want. If Birdie takes a fancy to one of her young males, she’ll sell him to me. It’s very nice of her but I don’t want to leave Birdie like that.
    I come every Saturday and let Birdie fly around with the other females. A lot of the males come over next to the partition and sing to her, but there doesn’t seem to be any particular male she prefers. There’s one male I like myself; he has a green back and a yellow-green breast with white flight feathers on the outside. His head isflat and his legs are long. There’s a definite turn under his throat but I never see him sing. He flies very gracefully with much dignity. Mrs Cox says he’s a chopper; he sings very strongly but