A sound woke me up in the dark middle of the night. I had no idea what kind of thing was making so much noise. A sort of shuffling sound, bumping into things. At first I thought it was a mouse, again, gnawing away. But when I got up and stood in the kitchen, listening, I realized the noise wasn’t coming from any mouse. The next thought I tried out was the possibility that the noise was being made by run-off from the automatic defrosting mechanism in the refrigerator. What ever it was that was making the noise, it wasn’t a mouse. I was getting cold. The bed was warm. I gave up wondering and went back to sleep.
It was only later, in the full light of day, that I heard the noise again. I looked over to the kitchen sink and saw the wee bird. Funny little round thing, brown, with a tiny tail that stuck straight up in the air. At first I thought the bird was outside, clambering along the mullion, trying to get in. Lately, similar little birds have been doing just this at night, hopping about on the sill, illuminated by the light that spilled from the window. But then I realized that the bird wasn’t outside. It was inside, trying to get out.
Luckily I know a thing or two about chasing down birds that are trapped in the house: #1: Don’t do it. Stand respectfully aside, and if you know anything about their language, talk to them in a soothing tone.
I had often watched these particular birds as they searched on the ground with quick abrupt motions, looking amongst the dead grasses and wood piles for whatever it is they eat. They are always making soft little chirps. You can carry on a sort of conversation with them by making the same chirping noises back at them. Call and response. Call and response. I often wonder if I am getting any of their language’s subtleties down. Maybe the birds are curious about what kind of weird bird is making such a hash of their dialect.
Sometimes I change the pattern and chirp twice where they would only chirp once. When I do this, it messes up the regular call and response. They pause, and it is almost as if they are thinking about the new kind of statement that has been made. When they finally get it together to comment with another single chirp, I swear it sounds tentative. I give a hearty chirp in reply, and then we continue with our happy call and response. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.
So for the benefit of the creature trapped in my kitchen, I made some soft, chirp-like tsks, just to let the beastie know that I knew it was there. I don’t know what I was saying in bird language. I might have been challenging all and sundry to a battle to end all battles. No matter. If I misspoke, the bird would likely tender to me the same forgiveness that you or I would give to a foreigner who was trying out our own language for the first time. I’m sure my tone carried my good intentions.
But the problem remained: how to get the bird out of the house. I tried to show it that there was a way out by opening the kitchen door. But at the first sound of the knob turning, the bird flew off into the dinning room. They’re flighty little things. Far less bold than your basic robin. I decided to go around opening all the doors until the bird got the idea and flew out. I’ve had success with this method before. The important thing with this method is that you have to make sure you are not between the door and the bird. But first you have to find it. Given the natural kind of habitat the wee thing hid in when it suspected that any creature bigger than itself was hanging around, I checked my potted Jade tree. No such luck.
I was about to give up, thinking that the bird would reveal itself at some point. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wee beastie sitting on the stairs. It was sort of perched there, leaning with a sever sideways tilt. It’s beak was hanging open. Old school scientists admonish us not to do any anthropomorphizing of creatures. But I know the look of exhaustion when I see it. The bird had been inside all night long, probably flying around in a panic to get out. Knocking itself half dead on window glass. Parched and hungry. I walked over and simply picked it up. It squawked in alarm, just once, but then it stilled in my grasp. “Don’t worry little bird. I’m not going to eat you.”
I took it outside and opened my hand. At first the bird was facing away from me, but it made a little hop and turned around. This tiny thing, far smaller than my palm, looked up at me.
We all have similar muscles in our faces. Minor variations here and there. Some of us can wiggle our ears. Some of us can make our scalp move fore and aft. But basically, there is only a set number of muscles that control all the movements of all human faces. All the other animals have a similar set of face muscles, give or take a few, attached to bones that perform similar functions. Our muscles can move our faces around in a set number of ways, into a set number of expressions. All the other animals have (again more or less) a similar set of possible expressions, with humans having the greatest number of expressions in their set and insects having the fewest (given that they have no soft tissue on the outside of their faces). Expressions telegraph emotions. The set of human emotions is probably the same set that animals have, albeit in different proportions for each animal. Why then shouldn’t we be able to read an animal’s expressions and thereby know what its emotions are? We read each other’s emotions well enough. The major difficulty in reading bird expressions can be overcome by making adequate allowance for the bird’s feathers. This should pose no more of a problem than we have in reading the emotional expressions on a bearded man’s face. And maybe the feathers, unlike the whiskers, have an advantage in that they might be mobile enough to magnify the movements of the face muscles.
When that wee wren looked up at me it did so in wonder and perplexity.
You had me. You didn’t eat me. What kind of creature are you?
This response is understandable. In the Winter Wren’s world, most larger animals are either trying to eat it, or to drive it away from the good food sources.
I smiled down at the bird and watched it watch me. But then my partner opened the door to see what was going on. The bird flew off into the air. It went and hid in the hawthorn bush.
