Friday 11 May 2012

Pig or fig

I am in my office on the High Street, among the screaming children; and there was a cockatiel in a buggy. It looked like a young human child but it sounded like a cockatiel. I knew a really vicious one in an old people's home, where a friend of mine had been put so that the people she had trusted with her affairs could make use of her possessions and house before she actually died.
This cute bird would sit in its small cage, plotting to inflict grievous wounds on anyone who volunteered intimacy. An intimacy it invited by singing everything from the twentieth century twelve tone repertoire.
I know the voice. The child was a cockatiel.
I thought of Alice and the child that turned into a pig.
I have no pepper.
As with the grass I referred to in my previous post, there is no one to tell. I feel like Matthew in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But I have had confirmation of my analysis. After a particularly loud squawk, even the mother could not stand it. A gelatinous alien creature in human form she may be, but the human body has its needs; and one of those needs is not to be screamed at by a cockatiel using the lungs of a child.
So, having picked it up and bounced it and fed it, none of which worked -- and why would they because they don't meet avian needs? -- she took a piece of cloth from the buggy and put it over the bird, which went quiet immediately.
She has gone now, having decided to pull the cloth off it -- at which point the cockatiel assumed it was morning and demanded bird seed.
I cannot help thinking the creature would be better off with me. I could have taken it from here; and, following Alice's story, it would soon have sprouted its wings and beak and presently flown away.

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