Repeating Cycles

“I think I’m going to save up to get a new bird,” my father proudly announces on the other end of the phone line.

I stifle a massive groan at the declaration as I throw myself back against the couch cushions in frustration, silently thanking dumb luck that this is a phone conversation and not in person. I never did have a good poker face.

I can practically hear the grin in the deep timbre of his voice, which is exactly why guilt starts to creep into my gut. The level of frustration these words invoke inside of me shouldn’t be directed towards something that brings him so much joy.

The problem isn’t so much the bird itself, though I’ve never been a fan of birds in general. They all have this permanently offended look about them. As if you’re an annoying neighbor and they are just moments away from bringing the perfect revenge plot to fruition. I’m telling you the 1963 movie The Birds was truly on to something. Those things are just a hair away from deciding they’ve had enough of our bullshit.

It certainly doesn’t help that at one point in my life, I had to sleep beside one of my dad’s birds. We didn’t have space in our house for the cage anywhere else, so I ended up being the lucky beneficiary.

I have traumatizing memories of this bird staring at me every time I sat on my bed, its soulless eyes baring into my soul. It was creeping me out enough at the time that I put a curtain up between my bed and the cage to get some relief. This bird, refusing to be daunted in his endeavor to mean mug me, responded by chewing a hole through the curtain so he could stick his entire head through and continue to stare at me accordingly, reaching an entirely new level of creepy.

My dad, loving the bird with every ounce of his being, thought this was hilarious and adorable behavior. I on the other hand felt this was nothing short of sociopathic, as I continued to try to sleep at night with his beady eyes boring into my body. This continued until his untimely death many months later. I promise you I had no part in it, though I can certainly understand why I would evoke suspicion.

Now, you may notice how my previous story ended with an untimely bird death. That’s not exactly a one-off situation. I never needed to be involved in this bird’s death, it seems the universe had me covered.

The problem isn’t the care my dad provides necessarily, it’s more the fact that he refuses to keep the birds inside the house. No matter how tragically these pets die, he is always convinced the next will never meet the same fate.

Lost in my thoughts, I notice the line has gone silent. “Well that’s interesting,” I tell him, “what kind of bird are you thinking of getting this time?”

Every couple of years, my dad goes through a bird-keeping phase. It’s not always the same type of bird, but it’s always the same cycle. A pattern that always begins with the absolute best intentions and ends in nothing but disaster and some sort of moderately satiated wild animal.

The most frustrating part is that each time he gets a new bird I know the outcome of what will happen. I’ve seen this play a hundred times. My dad’s track record with birdkeeping amounts to a list of outlandish accidents that typically leave me with more questions than answers. This next one will be no different.

My dad is never the one to kill them himself of course. Far from it, he seems to love these birds with the passion of a thousand suns. The problem isn’t the care my dad provides, on the contrary, he provides compassionate and loving care for these birds, which almost makes the whole thing more tragic.

The problem is the fact that he refuses to believe domesticated birds are indoor pets. No matter how tragically these pets die, he is always convinced the next will never meet the same fate.

However, from raccoon murder fest to lunch for the local stray cat to the most recent disaster, being plucked mid-air by a fortuitous hawk, these poor pets never stand a chance at survival. The universe is desperately trying to teach him the lesson that domesticated birds are indoor pets, but he refuses to listen.

And now in a couple of months, I’ll be getting a call to tell me that Patrick the parrot is no longer with us because of a wild snake incident.

At what point do I need to stage an intervention? I wonder.

I am suddenly distracted from my forlorn thoughts by hearing my dad say, “He was a good bird, he only flew off my shoulder twice. Once in the Walmart parking lot and once of course when the hawk got him.”

“He was a great bird,” I assure him, fighting not to imagine my dad dodging moving cars to chase an escaped bird through a Walmart parking lot. “Have you considered keeping this one inside the house?”

“Well, the problem isn’t taking them outside. I’ll just leash-train this one that way he won’t mind wearing it. I think that will solve the problem.”

I sigh, and this time set the sound free.

As my therapist says, we can’t control others. We can only control ourselves.

So the cycle continues.

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