Chapter 2: The Flash

Click here to read chapter 1


After a day of rest for the bird, Stella began the taming process. She started by placing her hand on the cage's door as she spoke to Sunshine in her sweetest voice for as long as she could. The next day Stella held a sprig of millet in the doorway while she touched upon all the random topics she could think of. The millet was like magic, the chatter soothing, and soon Sunshine was eating out of Stella's hand.

By day seven Sunshine was no longer afraid of the giant blobs of flesh, and was eating out of the hands of everyone in the family. The bird could finally relax, and began to feel at home inside of the cage.

"I'm going to try taking Sunshine out of the cage tomorrow," Stella stated as she passed the green beans to Rob at the dinner table, "I'll make sure to cover the mirror first, though."

Stella had read about a budgie who, after being lured out of its cage for the first time, crashed head first into a wall mirror and broke its neck.

"But Mommy," Cass defended her pet, "Sunshine is too smart to fly into a mirror."

"Birds aren't smart," John argued with his little sister, "especially not parakeets." Cass crinkled up her nose, folded her arms, and loudly turned away from her brother.

"That's enough Cass," Rob intervened, "John is entitled to his opinion and you are entitled to debate it with words, not by throwing things. Now pick up that toy from the floor and then turn around to finish dinner."

"Mommy," Cass continued after following her father's orders, "please tell John about the budgie who could talk."

"Well," Stella began after sipping her last drop of water from a wide clear glass, " did you know that a budgie named Puck holds the world record for having the largest vocabulary of any bird?"

"But birds don't understand the words that they say, right?" John asked even though he knew that the answer was no.

"I don't know,” Stella admitted to her son, “but I’m beginning to suspect that at some level they might."

Earlier that day, Stella had watched a video on the Internet in which an African Gray parrot named Alex displayed what appeared to be an amazing array of intelligent behavior. Stella watched astounded as Alex differentiated between and counted various objects whose names he could speak clearly and use creatively. Alex, a thirty year research subject whose name was an acronym for Avian Learning EXperiment, began to seem like a truly sentient being to Stella. After seeing the video, Stella did not doubt the reports that Alex had the intelligence of a five-year-old child at the time of his untimely death. Alex's last words to his human were, "I love you."

“Maybe it just depends on the bird,” Stella added.

Stella had lived with budgies for most of her childhood, and she often felt that the bird brain sparked with more intelligence than she knew how to reach. Later, when she studied psychology in college, she learned how to leave her gut emotions regarding animal intelligence behind. Now she found herself wishing that more parrot intelligence research would been conducted so that she could ease the cognitive dissonance she was experiencing from John's question.

"I would agree that birds do have some level of understanding," Rob stated.

Cass began to drift away from the conversation, preferring to play with a few of her rubber ducks instead. She had a huge collection of ducks, each with it's own costume, personality, and name. At the table that night was “Teacher Duck“ holding an apple, “Fire-Fighter Duck wearing an appropriate uniform, and the haloed “Angel Duck.” “Witchduck,” the first and favorite duck of all, watched the scene from the baker’s rack. A

After dinner, Stella sang "Hello Sunshine" as she entered the living room and sat down next to the cage. "Look at you hopping over to the perch closest to me. We're friends now, we are, and I've got some yummy endive for you."

While Stella was reaching into the cage to place a sprig of curly endive into the food dish, Sunshine hopped upon her wrist to begin nibbling on the leaves.

"Pardon me if I repeat words words words here because training a kissy kissy budgie bird budgie bird will do that to you,” Stella exhaled in a flow of baby breath.

“And what a sweet, smart and amazing little tweet lives with us now! Each day you are a little more trusting. I'm so happy that you now feel comfortable enough to sing and play and sit on my arm. Such excellent progress for a ten week old."

While Stella was rambling sentences off the top of her head, Sunshine appeared to be actively listening. The bird even had begun to softly tweet and make the crackling beak noises that some people compare to a kitten's purr. It made sense to Stella that keeping up her own chatter would help put Sunshine at ease. Budgies are flock animals, and when the flock grows silent there is usually an ominous reason.

"Thank goodness for the Internet! It is helping me to learn so much about budgies, and I was even able to locate the name of a good avian veterinarian. Did you like that vet who you met yesterday? I thought that she was very nice. I'm glad that she told me that too much spinach is not good for budgies because you like spinach so much that I would have fed it to you all day.”

Sunshine continued to nibble on the pale green leaves of the endive that Stella held in her hand until all that was left was an empty branch of lettuce. Stella then changed positions because her arm was falling asleep.

"Speaking of the Internet,” Stella smiled, “I started a blog called Sunshine The Bird last night, and I think that now would be a good time for me to take your first picture."

Stella slowly pulled her arm out of Sunshine's house-shaped cage before reaching across the sofa to pick up a camera. Sunshine hopped from perch to perch in anticipation of what interesting thing would be presented next. Maybe the box that the human was reaching for contained a yummy new treat.

Sunshine did not expect the bright splash of light that stunned her and left her momentarily blind. Was this death? No, the human was still there, and so was the cage, the bigger cage, and the bird songs from outside.

"Look at the pretty bird," Stella ordered as she turned the camera around to show the digital image to Sunshine. Sunshine wondered if the box in Stella's hand was related to the mirror in the cage. Obviously it did not contain a treat.

The flash reminded Sunshine of when she first emerged from the nesting box. This was when the world felt right. She still remembered her parents. Her mother, a beautiful blue and yellow hen with a cooing voice, regurgitated the yummiest home cooking in the world. Her father was a funny yet strong cock whose colors were very much like what Sunshine had seen in the mirror and in that gray box that created the crazy bright flash of light.

Sunshine remembered the snugly warm days spent in the nest, and then the feeling of free as she fledged into the aviary where she met her first flock. Plp and Chk were Sunshine's favorite playmates, and the three baby birds would climb up the bars of the aviary so high that the birds down below looked like seeds. It was scary to soar to the other side on new wings, but soon Sunshine and her friends were expert flyiers. Such carefree days those were, and Sunshine still pined for them.

One carefree day, when Sunshine was a couple of months old, a large blob of a featherless creature walked into the aviary with what appeared to be a smaller aviary and a net. The flock flew around in hysterics, and Sunshine did not know why. The elders knew that soon they would be missing many of their friends. The blob seemed intent upon catching only the youngest birds, so Sunshine had no chance of being spared. As she was carried away in the smaller aviary along with all of her young friends, Sunshine watched helplessly as her parents, screaming and pacing, disappeared. Sunshine would never see them again.

In the pet shop, Sunshine was comforted by the fact that she was still surrounded by many of her friends, and new ones as well. The eldest hen in the shop, a dark green and yellow witch of a bird who, Sunshine later learned, had left and returned to the pet shop 3 times , refused to speak to her new flock mates except to repeat the following words: "Beware the humans." Sunshine remembered not wanting to know what a human was, but she was inclined to believe that it might have something to do with the big blob from before.

During Sunshine’s second day at the pet shop, one of the suspected humans caught Sunshine's brother with a net, stuffed him into a small box, and hauled him away. Where had he gone? The following day, the same fate fell upon Plp and Chk. Sunshine desperately wanted to find out what was going on from the elder hen, but she was unwilling to share any information other than her one mantra about humans.

Day after day, Sunshine watched in horror as friend after friend was captured and taken away to the unknown. Several times the net came after Sunshine, but she had managed to evade it. Perhaps she would always be able to avoid capture and live forever in the pet shop.

Eventually a new batch of birds was added to the giant pet shop cage, and Sunshine was glad to have more birds to play with. One small new albino baby was especially frightened, and Sunshine cuddled up close to him and preened them both. At first he was too scared to talk, but Sunshine was finally able to coax a few words out of him. "I want my mommy," he spoke in Bird Talk.

Sunshine was finally able to persuade the little albino into a round of play, and soon a group of other birds joined the game. All of the budgies were enjoying a game of chase so exciting that they momentary forgot where they were and what dangers might be lurking. When the net appeared, Sunshine was caught off guard but was able to escape once again.

The featherless creatures outside of the cage made extra sounds, and then the net chased after Sunshine again. This time it was relentless. No matter where Sunshine ducked, there the net was. Finally, tired and with nowhere to hide, the wonder budgie surrendered limp into the mass of green mesh. Sunshine was sure, and even a bit relieved, that her short life was over.

Sunshine did not die, however, and the humans who took her out of the box and into the cage did not eat her. The first day, as she sat hunched over in the darkness, Sunshine wondered if she was being saved for a later meal. Then, after realizing that the new humans were probably not going to eat her, Sunshine began to fret less about an impending doom and more about loneliness.

Sunshine desperately missed being part of a flock. She had nobody to preen the top of her head and, more important, nobody to snuggle close with. The new cage did have a mirror so she could pretend that she had a friend, but it really was not the same.

The blobs, or humans, seemed to, like birds, care for one another. The biggest one regurgitated into the mouth of the second biggest one quite often, in fact, and the smallest one was cuddled by the biggest ones. And then there was the third biggest one who sang beautiful songs using an instrument with what looked like cage bars running down the length of it. He sang with his mouth in tones much deeper than what Sunshine was used to, but which she found quite pleasing regardless.

Would it be possible for these humans to be Sunshine's new flock? Sunshine doubted it, and criticized herself for even thinking such a thing. But then the second biggest one began talking again, and Sunshine had to admit that she found the human chatter not only agreeable but almost understandable.

"I want to show you a website that I found about a very special budgie named Elmer," Stella said to Sunshine as she placed her laptop computer in a position where the bird could see, "Elmer is a talking budgie. Maybe you can learn from him."

The computer screen, which also reminded Sunshine of the gray flash-making box from before, was suddenly filled with the image of a light blue and white budgie with an odd stripe pattern on his head. Sunshine had never before seen a budgie with such markings, and she was intrigued even before Elmer began to speak.

"My tongue will be the teacher of you and yours people," said Elmer the budgie, "behold the power of the budgie, pretty bird pretty bird, as seen on TV and on the radio heard from above, lover of millet and god and toys of pretty bird pretty bird."

Elmer was the most well-known budgie on the Internet at the time. He spoke with a thick budgie accent, soft and at a rapid pace, and some people believed that he used words in context. Often, he would quote The Bible.

In the space above Elmer and his chattering beak, words scrolled by like a karaoke machine. Elmer's owner, a woman named Faith Harper, had transcribed Elmer's ramblings into what she believed the English words were. Many of Elmer's videos greatly relied on these typed words to get Elmer's message across, but often the words he spoke were clear.

"Shall we watch another video of Elmer?" Stella asked the question but did not wait for Sunshine to reply.

In the next video Elmer was sitting on top of his cage, and Sunshine was impressed by that alone. Elmer went on to say that, "Kisses are love. I love. Elmer loves the pretty bird in you...pretty bird kiss kiss pretty pretty pretty bird!"

"You are such a pretty bird," Stella repeated to Sunshine.

Sunshine then felt like singing about tweets, and so she did.

Chapter 3