Coffee Talk

Paulie

"Look what I found." My wife came in from the carport waving a large plastic bag from Hobby Lobby. "It was on sale. I got it for a really good price."

I could see that it wasn't very heavy by the way she was waving it around but I would never have guessed what she had in the bag. So I asked.

"What have ya got in the bag?"

"Well, I am showing you. Keep your shorts on." She clunked it down on the table and pulled out a large, rusty birdcage. "It's for Mindy."

Mindy is our granddaughter. She graduates from high school in a couple of weeks

"We are getting Mindy a bird?"

My wife sighed that particular sigh that means I am hopelessly out of date with what is happening. Maybe one day I will document and categorize all of her sighs. But today I am not going to have time. I am about to get a chore.

With exaggerated patience, my wife explained. "This is for Mindy's graduation party."

Oh, like that explained everything. But I have learned not to ask. When I need to know, I will be told. I picked up the paper to continue where I had left off. "Oh, OK," I told her.

Is this a good time to rant about the paper? Probably not. So here comes the chore.

"I thought you could paint it for me."

I put the paper down and looked at the birdcage. It was tall and round, with a domed top. I didn't see any doors or any way to get the bird in but then I found a latch that allowed the whole top to swing open. It was not a real bird cage, but something my wife likes to call 'decor'. As I looked at it, I realized it wasn't even real rust, but some sort of painted finish that looked like rust.

"This is already painted," I said. "It is supposed to look like this." I rubbed my hand along the wire side and some of the faux rust flaked off onto the table. Oh-oh. I dropped my hand to the table in a casual move to cover the rust flakes but I was too late.

"Maybe you could at least seal it for me?" That looks like a question as I type it here, but I think you know that it was not. Sighing theatrically, I stood up, picked up the paper and the birdcage, and moved to the back porch. I put the newspaper on the table, the birdcage on the newspaper, and went to my shop to find the clear acrylic spray can.

When I came back through the kitchen, my wife stopped me at the door and pointed. Sitting on top of the faux birdcage was a real bird. It was green with some red markings and stood a handspan tall. "It's a parrot," my wife whispered. We were standing inside, looking out. The door was closed.

"Why are we whispering?" I whispered.

So it turns out, after calling around the neighborhood, that a lady a couple of blocks away had lost her parrot. She came right over.

"Paulie!" She said.

"Hello," said Paulie.

She had brought some birdseed and a smaller cage. Paulie eyed the cage suspiciously and said "dinner." But he would not go into the cage to eat. Finally, we put some seed on the newspaper and he ate it. I was going to grab him but the lady said "he bites" so I decided he was her problem.

Try as we might, we could not get Paulie to go in either cage. He might have had a bird brain but he wasn't dumb. He still hangs out in the woods behind our house. When he gets hungry, he raises a ruckus and I put some seed on the outside table. He drops in, sometimes, when I am grilling hamburgers and we have a brief chat. "Hello" seems to be his favorite word but just once, after he ate, I thought I heard him say "Thanks."