BitterSweetLife

At the top of the heap
By the Christmas tree
Is the present you did not foresee.
Your heart hits high gear
When the object appears
And your mom says, “Well, dear,
It’s quite a surprise,
But we thought it was time
You had something alive.”

::

Christmas at my parents’ was the context for one of the most startling presentations in recent years. An oblong object was put in front of me (Obviously, too large to be Armand Nicholi’s The Question of God), and I pulled the covering off, then stared in amazement as a yellow canary hopped back and forth in a cage.

I incredulously watched the small bird, and an almost forgotten excitement washed over me. As a kid, I had been the caretaker of a Welsh Corgi, a family of guinea pigs, a series of gerbils, a squirrel, two rabbits, a crow, a cockatiel, two parakeets, various turtles, frogs, snakes and lizards, a tank of fish, and assorted insects. I’d lobbied for a horse, but for some reason my parents didn’t think a horse would fit in our backyard. The plan at the time was (obviously) to be a zoologist.

However, when you live in a downtown loft, you tend to think the days of pets are over. It was quite the surprise to discover I was wrong—and that the old thrill over living, keep-able creation was far from dead.

::

My canary was pretty quiet for the first couple days at home. Sizing up the loft, probably. He spent the night happily enough, his cage placed beside our yucca. In the daylight, he jumped back and forth in his roomy domicile and chirped. He eyed Lindsay and me inquisitively. He vigorously beaked fresh broccoli and apples. But he didn’t really sing…



However, irony strikes when you least expect it. I was working on my talk on Epiphany, taking a look at the bird from time to time. After awhile, I pulled up my media player and pushed play—and as the music piped out of the speakers, the little fellow burst into prolonged warbling. Apparently the melody line in Death Cab For Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” had caught his fancy.