I should have moved the desk. My body was strangely controted and crammed quite unnaturally between my tower and my printer on the lower shelf on my desk. I could feel the carpet burning its curly strands into the fleshy part of my knees. I craned my neck so as not to bump it on the underside of the desk. With the Index and middle fingers of my right hand, I searched the whole that I had just cut in the sheetrock. Still nothing. I knew the cable line had to be somewhere close to where I was probing, but I just could not find it. I started to perspire mildly as the chalky white dust particles of the freshly cut sheetrock wafted paste my face.
Ding Dong. Ding Dong. The doorbell chimed so I extracted my fingers from the wall and rushed to the front door. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my the neighbor whom lives in the house behind mine standing there smiling. Her greeting was friendly but rushed. There was a certain sense of urgency in here voice. A look of preoccupation in her eyes. “I think one of my birds went into your backyard,” she said in a nervous manner. You see, my neighbor raises cockateels and parrots. She is a bird breeder. The day that we moved in, she came over to greet us, clutching one of her brand new babies in her bossom. It was obvious from her loving caresses and the way her eyes lit up when she spoke of them that she loved her birds.
My heart stopped. I knew that it was probably already too late, but I held on to the hope that she was mistaken. I could only image what would happen if Max and Casey Lynn, my two 60+ pound dogs found the little bird first. We bolted to the back door and began frantically searching the yard. Nothing. Then, on the right side near the gate, we saw a small patch of white feathers. The bird was nowhere to be found. My two dogs were aroused by all the commotion. I continued scanning the backyard with no fowl in site. The tension in the back of my kneck and the knot in my stomach slowly began to release themselves. Bored with the lack of attention, my dogs returned to their previous resting places. That is when I saw it. A small mass of yellow and white feathers lying at Casey’s feet. I am not sure how I missed it before. It seemed so obvious now. The stark white and yellow against the earthy green of my plush lawn.
I immeadiately grabbed my daughter, Gabriela, placed her inside the house shut the back door. Her screams were muffled, but still audible through the closed door. My neighbor approached the scene, grief stricken. “My baby,” she muttered in a mournful whisper, just as Casey licked the limp carcass. Here face was flush, and though tears did not form, her anguish filled the air like a palpable fog that now loomed over my backyard. Over my newly acquired home. I quickly grabbed my dog, my baby, by the collar and ushered her away. Before I could think of what to do next, my neighbor gently scooped her disemboweled cockateel into her two palms. Whimpering, she carried it to through my house, holding it like some sort of offering to an enexorable god, as penance for some unforgivable sin. Never once did her gaze break from the grotesque heap that she carried in the palms of her hands.
As she walked out my front door, I stood with mouth agape. Speechless. At the last minute I found the only words that at the time seemed appropriate. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“No. Things happen,” she replied in a mournful, breathy squeak. She never looked back. She never looked up from her palms.
The next day after church, my daughter and I took her a small bouquet of Lillys. Her seventeen year old son answered the door. She was not home. He assured me, “It’s okay. They get out sometimes. These things happen.”