First, it was one that came. A small one with short legs, a tiny beak and light sky blue feather covering. It flew down uncertainly from a castor plant standing on an empty plot behind my gauzed window. Its leafy branches hung low on my side of a fence topped with sharp bottle spikes. It was before 6am. It was the curious bird’s chirpy sound that got me out of bed. I leaned on my left shoulder towards the window and tried to mimic its ear-piercing chirps and got it altogether wrong. The bird noticed my poor parody and off it flew up and away. Gone but not for too long. Unfamiliarity naturally gives way to caution, fear even!
Smallee (that was the name I gave it) returned few minutes later, this time not alone but with a partner, bigger, brighter and bolder. They stayed in the castor’s foliage for some time, holding a chirpy conversation. Shortly, the two nose dropped to the ground, a short distance from where I sat in a plastic chair. Ashe! they had seen rice leftovers my children dumped on top a drains chamber that morning. They skipped towards it and started picking the grains, one at a time. They ate and sang but all the while watchful. Watching out for any enemy which might be a sparrow, a mouse, a cat, a snake. Or even I. They ate and ate and ate until the small mound disappeared. Then they flew away…..
Day 3, five more came by. This time the company was more differentiated. There were more birds including doves and canaries, these latter, however, would not come down. They remained in the leaves. Lizards and mice and cats and, imagine, even flies. The lizards and rats and cats and doves all walked on legs while the smaller birds skipped. The birds were not afraid of the lizards but would not come near the cats. Often the bigger birds tried to chase off the small ones even when there was enough to go round. Greed or survival of the fittest as in the wild.
Two weeks had gone by and my small ‘community of friends’ also increased. The number had gone up to 30 and still counting by the third week. I asked my kids to increase the supply of food which included raw grains, cooked rice, flour and peeled watermelon. It seemed the first comers had spread the message “there is more food there now” for we were receiving newcomers by the day.
The result was a veritable Tower of Babel. The doves were cuckooing grukokokuu, the canaries singing fififififiiiiiiiharrrehhh and the other birds chirping krikrischip schip shrip chiwi. Once in a while the doves would get into a real fight and that could go on for 10 minutes or more. While they were at it, the rest kept munching. On my part, I tried to walk myself into the mix. First, I made sure my parodying of the different sounds was as close as it could be to the original. One early morning, a lone dove arrived and perched on the fence, its head turning here and there. Sighting it, I let out a long shrill grukokokuu. Surprised, it turned quickly in the direction of my window. It came and hooked its legs to the wire mesh, trying to peer into the room. I stretched out my arm as if to touch it but it flew away.
It had been three months now. The number had multiplied threefold, the supply of food increased and so the familiarity and confidence. I would take up my kingly position behind the window but make sure to sit as still as a statue. Many of them took their time coming down from the fence and three. Seeing that that thing that looked like a human being was perhaps was not, they dived down, some going for the mountain of stale food, others walked or skipped past my motionless body to dig for worms in a small pool of water to my right. A lizard crept under my chair to pull flies with their long tongues. Occasionally, I would simulate a cough which would start off a hundred metre dash for safety. But living with these quirky friends from the world of nature was sweet, very sweet. I couldn’t be praise the “hands that made us .” [Psalm 19:1-3] Closeness to nature, over time, has inspired volumes of cerebral literary works. These include Chinua Achebe’s nature poem “Mango Seedling”, Wole Soyinka’s “Swamp Dwellers”, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s “Grain of Wheat” and “The River Between”. Farther afield, we recall Wordsworth’s idyllic poem “Michael” and William Blake’s allegorical poem “The sick Rose”.
Let’s go back. My quirky community lived and worked in harmony and peace until September when, from nowhere, tragedy struck. A man came one day and cleared the plot of grass to cultivate beans and in the process cut down the castor plant. The staging post of my community had been wrecked. Before then, my people had complained that I no longer had time for the family. They had lost me to my avian and reptile and cat friends. After the castor tree was uprooted and burned, my landlady sold the property we were renting and the new property put us out. We relocated and so perhaps did my quirky friends. Vamos.
End
