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| BIRD-THE BOOK |
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| Tired of the same old 'whodoneit's' and romance novels? |
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| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738836427/qidhttp |
| http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=doug+crowson&userid=1JV2LPVIF4 |
| CHAPTER TWO (Willie Warbler visits his psychiatrist.). |
 Willie, a Blackburnian Warbler, was spending the opening day of mating season eve relaxing and reading over a few notes he'd made while reading the two pamphlets his doctor had given him. One had been of particular interest to Willie and he had written down several important quotations from it just to remind himself of the changes he had to make in his lifestyle. Entitled: "Sexual Perverticism Among Warblers," Willie had read it twice. The other pamphlet, "How to Overcome Drug and Alcohol Addiction Through Meditation and Diet," didn't interest Willie as much. He didn't do drugs and his drinking wasn't a problem, he thought, even though he stayed drunk most of the time. Typical.
After checking his notes, he lay back in his nest, closed his eyes, and recalled the first session he'd had with Dr. Sigmund "Ziggy" Seagull.
Dr. Seagull was a robust gull, bespectacled and pompous, and like most intellects he didn't pay much attention to his appearance. He always went about in random disarray with feathers sticking out in all directions...the rumpled look. Real intellects are too busy thinking intellectual thoughts to worry about their looks. Dr. Sigmund "Ziggy" Seagull was a pseudo intellect, and he didn't worry about his looks because he was a sot. He walked with a casual sway that most common birds thought was rather chic, but in fact, it was the only way he could ambulate without his hemorrhoids torturing him to death.
Dr. Seagull gave pretty good advice to his patients, but he didn't take much of it seriously himself. He handled his problems down at the bar-stump or from his medicine bag. His theory was: if a bird can't remember his or her problems, then for all practical purposes, they don't have any. Drinking and thinking doesn't mix. Like oil and water, they hate each other.
The day Willie entered the psychiatrist-bird's office-tree for his first session, Dr. Seagull was suffering a temple pounding hangover. His dark, little, John Lennon-bird sunglasses gave him the appearance of being rather cool, but in reality, their primary duty was to hide the squinty little bloodshot eyes that were peeping from underneath their drooping lids. He had considered taking the day off, but he needed the money. Ziggy always needed money to keep his valium vial filled and to pay his bar-stump tab. Money making schemes filled his mind. The psychiatrist scam had been a little slow lately, but sometimes even a blind squirrel will stumble across a nut.
Willie was nervous about spilling his guts to anyone and he had almost called to cancel his appointment, but he needed help, and this, he figured, was the only place to get it. He'd tried everything except giving up alcohol, but he knew that wasn't the problem.
"Come in, Mr. Warbler, come in." Dr. Seagull welcomed Willie with a flair, sweeping a wing gracefully toward a comfortable chair. "How are you today?"
"Nervous," Willie said, "I'm a little nervous."
"Well, most folks are nervous on their first visit, but you'll learn to relax and open up after we get going." This was a fact that Doctor Sigmund Seagull had wished were not so true on many occasions when some blabber mouth patient would become engrossed in explaining every little detail of their morbid, dreadful, boring lives. He'd learned to deal with it, though, in one of two ways. He would simply keep reminding them to keep on track, or he'd sit back and let them ramble on as his clock ticked.
"I hope so," Willie said.
Dr. Seagull lowered himself carefully into a well-padded chair and said, "Well sir, lets start off by me asking a few preliminary questions, and then we'll see if we can find out just what's causing this problem of yours." Doctor Seagull laid a little tape recorder on a table near Willie and nodded his head toward it, "You mind?"
"I guess not."
"Okay, first question. Can you afford to pay for my services?"
"Oh yeah. I got plenty of money."
"Oh yeah!" Dr. Seagull perked up, "whatta ya do?"
"I've got my own musical group. I'm sure you've heard of us, Willie and the Warblers." Willie was always proud to talk about his success in music.
"I gather you didn't spend a whole lot of time coming up with the name for your ensemble, but that's neither here nor there. I'm not much into music, but the fact that you're a musician, and that you're seeking psychiatric help does shed some light on things. And so, you make a lot of money, eh?"
"Oh yeah. You won't believe it, Doc. We started out, me and a couple of my buddies, singing on a telephone line over near the nuclear power plant, just as a hobby, ya know. Well sir, the more we sang over there, the more our voices became different, and all the other birds started liking it. Besides that, our feathers started changing color and we grew all these extra appendages between our legs. Everybody thought we were pretty cool. Next thing you know, we've got an agent and he's booking us in high dollar night club-trees all over the south. Shit man, we're going on a nationwide tour as soon as this mating season is over. You don't have to worry about my ability to pay your bill, Doc. Money is not a problem at all with me."
"Goody, that's great to know. I was a little curious at first about the color of your feathers and those things banging around down there in your crotch. I just figured you were one of those older birds who try to emulate the younger generation, you know, dressing like them, body piercing, all that. How old are you, anyway? Call me Ziggy."
"Four, Call me Willie."
"Okay. Now, Willie, what brings you here?"
"It's a sex problem, Ziggy."
"Musician, sex problem, hmmmm, that doesn't surprise me. Do you play the guitar and fly airplanes?"
"I'm a bird, Doc."
"Oh yeah, that's right. Well, lets see if we can get to the meat of the subject here." Dr. Seagull sat back and crossed his legs, looking very professional for a second until a searing message from below reminded him that he was anally challenged. He rearranged himself carefully, finally getting comfortable. "Sex problem you say? Can't get it up, huh?"
"Can't keep it down, Doc."
"Well well, that's unusual. Most of my patients got it the other way around. I prescribe more Viagra than anything else. Tell me what kind of problems this, er, uh, event causes for you?"
"I don't mean that it sticks out all the time Doc, shoot, I couldn't fly with all that drag. What I mean is that every time I see a good looking young chick my first thought is of having sex with her," Willie explained. "As far as the problems it causes for me are concerned, well for starters, about a year ago my wife left me for another bird, a rich, stuck up Martin."
"And just how do you feel about that?"
"I feel okay about it, actually. It's just that she stayed home most of the time, and kept the nest pretty neat and orderly. Now it's a friggin' mess, bird shit all over the place." Willie said.
"Well sir, the way I see it, you're not only a horny bird, you're a sorry slob too. You couldn't hang your ass over the edge of the nest to do your business?"
"That's a thought, by golly, maybe I'll try that."
"Well now, why do you think your wife left you? Was it because you were so horny?"
"I don't think it was the horny part, Doc, I think it was jealousy. You know how it is with us famous musicians. We always have a flock of them little groupie chicks following the band around, and it's almost impossible to turn 'em down when they start rubbing all over you. I try, but well--Nature. You know how She is, Doc."
"Yeah, I know." Ziggy's mind drifted off for a moment as he tried to recall how long it had been since he'd succumbed to the call of nature with a lady-gull. "Pardon me, what was that you said about the young chicks?"
"Well, it's just hard to turn them down when they rub it in your face, Doc."
"Weren't you afraid you'd get some of these chicks pregnant, Willie?"
"Oh, I did, Doc, and it's costing me a bundle to support all the kids I got, but I can afford it. Shoot, I'm making more money than I can spend anyway."
"Well, I'll handle that problem right now." Dr. Seagull leaned close to the little tape recorder and said, "Note...make an appointment for Mr. Willie Warbler to have a vasectomy." He also made a mental note to instruct Dr. Sissortail about the charging techniques to be used in dealing with this uppity, rich Warbler.
"Hey, wait just a fucking minute here Ziggy, ain't that where they cut your dick off?"
"Oh no, they don't cut it off. They just clip some sort of little gizmo down there close to it. I'm not really up to poop on exactly what they do, but you don't want any more kids, do you?"
"No sir, but I'd sure as hell like to keep my dick, if that's possible."
"No prob. I'm gonna refer you to a specialist in the field, Dr. Blinky Scissortail. You'll be fine."
"As long as I can keep my dick, Doc."
"Now, let us back to the problem of your being so horny. As I see it, you just want to screw all the chicks you come across, without the responsibility of marriage, right?"
"Not really," Willie said, "I want to be married. I want to live like a normal bird. You know, have a nice nest, a nice wife, and maybe one more batch of kids, the American dream, I think they call it."
"Yeah, I think that's what they call it," Ziggy suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of Willie.
Willie was a little bewildered by this, but he figured that the good doctor was in deep thought, and watched him in silence.
Ziggy clasped his pinfeathers behind his back, held his head high, made six, slow, deliberate steps, did a snappy, military style about face, and repeated the routine. Dr. Seagull's thoughts were rambling: How much can I charge this nut-bird? Is he really as rich as he says he is? How long do I have to listen to his idiot? Damn, I wish I had a drink of fi |
| CHAPTER THIRTY ONE (Ziggy in the swamp.) |
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The cathedral ceiling of tall cypress limbs draped with spanish moss and the lower, scattered juniper combined to darken the placid swamp. The cool black waters teemed with life. Dozens of species of fish and reptiles lurked under the slowly undulating surface going about the business of survival. An occasional ripple appeared as a bug or fly settled on the surface, sometimes becoming lunch for one of the many species of fish indigenous to the area. Blue Herons and Flamingos waded slowly among the exposed roots of the cypress, heads bent, staring into the murky waters, searching for their next meal, sometimes becoming the next meal for a bull alligator disguised as a floating log.
The sounds in the swamp were sedate. The chirping of a stray Wren or the squawking of a Parrot, the whistling of a Plover or the squeaking of a Black Skimmer were respectively whispered in these environs. The occasional bellow of a bull Alligator being disturbed from his sleep might have been the reason for the quietness here. The ultimate librarian.
One such insomniatic bull Alligator was letting his feelings be known on this day.
Since dawn a mysterious thumping had resounded through the cypress and juniper. This strange, rhythmic, ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump echoing through the usually peaceful swamp had frazzled the nerves of the natives and they were getting extremely restless. The wading birds looked upward trying to locate the origin of this strange racket. All the other birds had stopped their whispered chirping, squawking, whistling and squeaking and they too were scanning the area for this obnoxious intruder.
High in a tall cypress, partially hidden from below by a clump of gray-black Spanish moss, Dr. Sigmund "Ziggy" Seagull straddled a limb, wings wrapped tightly around the trunk of the tree. His head moved in a methodical arc as he rammed his beak into the unrendering tree. His brain sloshed about in his tiny scull in tidal waves of confused and fragmented thoughts.
Ziggy had succeeded in evading Willie Warbler his first night on the run by pretending to be a weather vane. After almost getting his ass end burned off at Cape Kennedy he'd wobbled his way back inland and sat in a creek all day. He spent the next night as a cast concrete statue on a bird bath. He spent the next day and night as the logo of a human retirement home by perching inertly on top of their sign.
From that point on he took up pretending to be other species of birds. He became a Crow by rolling himself in a pile of cow shit to change his color. He did a pretty good job as a mocking bird until his vocal chords collapsed. He was a rooster for a while but the horny hens wouldn't leave him alone after his first tryst with a young fryer who blabbed her erotic experiences to the rest of the coop. Not having tail feathers for balance caused Ziggy to be a very unusual lover and he was very proud of his performances. He would have remained a rooster longer but he just wasn't as young as he used to be and sometimes even sex can get to be a drag when too much is available, like a human co-ed college campus. When he moved on to become a cowbird he made a mental note of the location of the henhouse, though, just in case he regained his strength. He might just keep his tail feathers clipped, he figured.
He pretended to be a cowbird and perched on the rump of a Jersey for a few days but he got medium broiled by the radiant heat of the Florida sun. He hadn't dared get in the cows shade to take a break from the blistering heat because he remembered the Santa Gertrudis event.
Ziggy hadn't eaten in weeks and his mind was slipping. When he decided he had to change jobs because of the heat in his cowbird position he had chosen to be a woodpecker as his next challenge, hence the cypress tree.
Ziggy had been pounding away at the cypress tree for eight straight hours when one of the Blue Herons finally spotted him as the source of the alien disturbance. The Heron flew up to ask him to stop it.
The Heron lit on the limb behind Ziggy and watched him for a minute. Damndest thing I ever seen, the Heron thought, a friggin' old seagull up here astraddle a cypress limb acting like a goddam woodpecker.
"Hey man, will you cut that shit out before you hurt your fucking self?" the irate Heron yelled in the good doctor's ear.
But Ziggy was already hurt, physically and mentally. His body was weak from like of nourishment and the incestuous romances in the henhouse and in his waning mind he had became a woodpecker. He wasn't a gull pretending to be a woodpecker, now he was a woodpecker. Several times during the day he had tried to emulate Woody's laugh on the back stroke but he just couldn't get it right. "Ha ha ha HEE ha," he tried, "ha ha hee HO ha," nah, "hee ho ha HO hum." He quit. He was failing at this job, just like he had failed at everything else he'd tried in his stupid assed life. But he was trying hard. The longer he banged his beak into the tree the harder he banged until there wasn't many bangs left.
When the Heron screamed in Ziggys ear his heart stopped beating. His brain continued to work though, for a little while. His wings slowly released their grip on the tree trunk and his old rumpled body rotated on the limb until he was hanging like a bat. Then the muscles in his varicose veined legs lost their clasp on the limb and he fell.
He made two feeble attempts to get his engine running as he plummeted downward, trying to flap his wings, but his battery was dead and he was out of gas. He hit the water on his back and for a while he bobbed gently on the ripples he'd caused. As he floated on the surface of the cool water he remembered Sally-Rachel. He recalled folding his wings over the gorgeous Warbler at the Fig-Newton while Willie was singing with the band. He felt even now the thrill of his approaching orgasm on that night, the holding back, the letting go, the prolonging of the ecstatic, euphoric tingle of every cell of his body as they gave up their special spirit, the speciial gene, the DNA, the blueprint of life for future generations. The acceptance of natures reward for the procreation of the species was near and he couldn't hold back much longer. Finally Ziggy succumbed to this overwhelming, uncontrollable force and exploding into eternity as a grumpy Alligator's jaws crunched his tired body and gulped him into darkness.
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