Congo the Gray

The universe, with its expansive realms of opportunity (and equally odd yet powerful nudges), never ceases to amaze me, nor does this beautiful life of mine.  

I was asked by friends to watch their caged and domesticated African Gray while they ventured to Disneyland for the week. Though I truly like this feathered creature, he is a bird that strongly desires to sever at least one, if not all, of my fingers using a beak as powerful and efficient as Fiskar loppers. He has slashed and broken skin and blood vessels on many an extremity of unsuspecting admirers (even his owner's), though his owner (my dear friend) claims he is simply misunderstood and actually very much craves touch. 

[insert wide-eyed emoticon]  

I prefer to misunderstand him from afar rather than touch him as he cocks his head and I watch the pupil of one of his eyes dilate and contract like the eye of a person suffering a concussion. He scares the shit out of me, frankly, and feeding him requires David Blaine-like hand/eye coordination lest my long, lean fingers free-fall from my person and become carnage amidst the pile of nut fragments and half-eaten berries at the bottom of his cage.

Forget allowing him to wander outside his bird fortress as I water the tomato plants. I wouldn’t turn my back on this so-called misunderstood warm-blooded vertebrate, let alone attempt to coax him back into his metal mansion of hanging toys after hours of clipped-winged freedom. I decide that I will nurture and care for him while keeping sturdy vertical bars of metal between me and his guillotine-like mouth.   

Day 1 of my 5 days of bird care comes with an alarmingly beautiful nod from the universe. For the past few months I’ve needed several of these universal gestures to push me along in my heart-healing. This reminder, however, was freakishly overt and left Congo’s and my relationship, well… changed.

I walk to the 5-foot tall cage and greet my feathered friend by whistling a jingle I make up on the spot for him, in the hopes that he will respond by repeating my simple tune the way he repeats conversational phrases or creepily mimics babies laughing. To no avail. He just cocks his head and glares at me. I smile a timid grin and promise him I won’t start reciting hokey bird phrases like “Polly want a cracker?” if he promises in return not to attack my flesh when I unlock the door to feed him. Making this deal with him feels as futile as the U.S. making a treaty with North Korea, so I proceed with healthy caution.  

With great trepidation, I open the small door attached to Congo’s food bowl. He moves on his perch just above this door, his body rises to stand for a very brief moment on his tip-toes (if the tips of talons can be considered toes) then he thrusts his body forcefully downward like a sword speedily unsheathed and expeditiously plunged into a supine enemy’s ribcage. His movement, aimed directly at my fingertips, is precise and intentional.

Thankfully my reflexes match the speed of the incredulous “WTF?!” that resounds silently within my gray matter, and I shove closed the small door with a force that matches Congo’s full-bodied lunge. Nuts, berries, and crunchy bird edibles scatter below us, inside the cage and onto the hardwood floor. I freeze and blankly stare at my “misunderstood” friend. I don’t blink for about 30 seconds, then unhinge my jaw from its fear-induced clench to exclaim “Congo– it’s going to be a long night if this is how you are going to play this.” 

With my heart beating as though I've just sprinted a flight of stairs, I engage in some desperate bird-whisperer conversation as Congo cocks his head to the side and acts as though he's listening. 

In my attempt to remain unmaimed by this lovely creature, I become delusional, imagining that a loving conversation might make a difference to my bird friend. Maybe he would take pity on me if he knew that just prior to this visit I had been lost in an area of Delridge that somehow fell off the neighborhood association's radar in its recent cleanup and gentrification process. 

In order to keep from ussigning unnecessary blame, I spare Congo the fact that his owner (my dear friend) inadvertently sent me to the wrong address to retrieve the front door key to her home so that I could enter and play a thus far pathetic version of St. Francis of Assisi for her beloved bird. Instead, I simply share the harrowing story of my GPS routing me onto a dead-end street where three large men are shooting something intravenously. I had stumbled onto a road resembing that of Hastings Street in Vancouver B.C. in order to retrieve the front door key that would enable me to enter his home to feed and care for him— but realize that my feathered companion couldn't care less. I feel a bit like a parent whose adolescent child has indignantly scoffed at a gallant effort to accommodate him. I can tell Congo is mocking me with his head tilt, and eagerly awaiting my next attempt to feed him. At this point, I give up my effort to win him over and find myself sympathizing with my own parents having to deal with me at age 13. I nearly launch into some reminiscent melodramatic lecture: "I put my life on the line to get to you so you wouldn't starve tonight, you little shit! This is the thanks I get?!"

Instead, I work up the courage to open death's door one more time before I resort to flicking every single delicious morsel of peanuty delight one at a time through the cage's metal bars into Congo's food bowl. Resigned to the fact that the bird in fact has the upper hand here, I bend down to scoop up the flyaway food that was strewn across the hardwood floor when I dodged his initial attack. What happens next proves to be the most terrifyingly terrific thing of my week.  

I have apparently failed to latch the food door, and Congo– like Houdini– escapes without sound or warning. The next thing I know he has leapt onto my head, talons gripping and his beak entwining a good chunk of my hair as he flutters his wings in crazed hysteria as if he's attempting to pick me up like the eagles retrieving the lifeless bodies of Frodo and Samwise Gamgee from the flaming rocks of Mordor in Lord of the Rings.  

I scream a murderous and blood-curdling scream that I’m certain will summon emergency responders from all directions as my head is being jolted to and fro by flapping wings. I don’t stop screaming until I flail myself, with Congo atop my head, onto the sofa, where he, previously equally freaked out by my eardrum-piercing howls of fright, suddenly saunters off my head and rests on the arm of the sofa, shakes himself out, stands on one leg looking at me as if none of this has just happened.   

I push myself from the sofa where Congo remains standing, slide across the hardwood floor and stop lifeless and seated cross-legged. I touch my tender scalp, certain I am bleeding. No blood. Relieved, yet in what I suspect is a crazy fear-inspired collapse, I fall forward and throw my head into my hands as an uncontrollable rush of emotion fills me and I begin to cry profusely with a momentum that I’m certain will never cease. I feel a storm of emotions surfacing like lava spewing uncontrollably upward from the churning belly of an active volcano, and the force with which they are ascending feels terrifyingly intense. They arrive, and I begin to cry fierce displaced tears of missing and wanting, tears of abandonment and disregard. Sadness of what was and what apparently cannot be washes over me– I cry harder. The pain and exhaustion of a seemingly unending heartbreak makes me cry even harder. I cry for what seems like an eternity. I haven’t cried this hard since Uncle Joe left the planet, and I’m convinced I will never stop crying.

Then, I look up.  

With tear-soaked eyes, I see Congo seated on the sofa’s armrest, staring down at me and looking strangely captivated and oddly entertained by my sobbing. My wails taper off to sighs and sniffles as I watch my feathered friend shrug his shoulders and casually hop from the armrest to the side table, leap onto the outer part of his cage, climb the metal bars and walk nonchalantly through the open food door to position himself back onto his perch. His exit from my dramatic scene is marked with his little bird swagger that says, “My work here is done.”  

My entire energy shifts and I smile, then I begin to laugh–hard. I fall to my side and roll onto my back, breathlessly engaged in uncontrollable belly laughter. I’m suddenly in love with this f*#-ing bird. Congo the Gray has initiated an emotional purging of some deep-seated pain that has burrowed so far inside me that it required being upheaved by sheer terror. Congo’s attack suddenly feels divinely inspired and perfectly timed. This little scary bird has granted me an opportunity to further heal by facing and releasing what felt like a lifetime of emotions that were in desperate need of surfacing. I gather enough strength to pull myself from my cathartic place on the floor, and walk to my sage friend's cage. I bow and silently thank him. What he does next allows any remaining and residual tears to complete their escape. He turns his beautiful gray head and pushes it up against the cage bars for me to touch him. Without hesitation, I do. Then he positions more of his neck close to the bars like a little puppy enjoying gentle pets and leaning in for more. I smile as I watch my index finger, which only moments before he so desperately wanted to chomp, gently glide over his gray head and neck feathers in a gesture of affectionate gratitude.

When he's had enough, he slowly straightens back to his standing position on his perch, leans forward into his food bowl and grabs the one fully shelled peanut that somehow made it into his cage during our initial scuffle.

I pour the rest of his food into his food bowl with the calm of a Tibetan monk, shut the food door and tell Congo I will see him tomorrow.

At the end of the 5-day stint with my fine feathered friend, he offers one more gift.  After I pet his head– also now a daily hello and goodbye ritual– I open the front door of my friends'  home to make my final departure, and for the first time I hear him say in a voice eerily similar to my own, "Tomorrow."

I pull myself back inside the threshold and look into Congo's cage to acknowledge him. He then whistles that mid-ranged octave whistle that I've surmised during my time with him is what he does when he is happy.

I smile and let him know that his people return tonight, but that I will definitely see him sometime soon.

He responds by projectile pooping into his bowl of fresh water.