Voice of the Animal - Guesst Writers

Requiem for a Pet

Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

When I left her that morning early in January she was fine: well-fed and looking forward to another sunny warm day in Southern California hunting field mice across the street along the creek’s high grass and later sun bathing on top of the blue tarp that covers our pop-up camper sitting in the driveway.

That is where I heard her moaning in a very strange tone when I arrived home that afternoon. BJ, our cat of 10 years, and named by our son, Steve, she had outlasted four other cats both in San Antonio, where we got her, and now here. But today she was lying alongside the camper and moaning. Not normal behavior. Her moans sounded just this side of a growl, and it had an urgency about it. She was, I knew, calling for help.

As soon as I looked at her, I saw that her body was not aligned as it should be. I knew from her posture we were in trouble. Her back legs, lying side by side with no life in them, seemed strangely detached from the rest of her. I thought for an instant that the back part of her was dead, while the front part, with front paws stretched out and supporting her, and her head, were all that remained alive. She could not get up. Clearly she had been hit.

An outdoor cat by day, BJ slept in the garage at night on an old red-checkered flannel sleeping bag draped across the back of my Ford pick-up truck. Or if I had just arrived home, she loved to climb on to the hood to enjoy the engine’s heat until it cooled. These were her comfort zones each night. Ever since we had moved to California 5 years ago, we’d performed this nightly bedding ritual. Picked from a litter of 5 by my wife when we lived in San Antonio, she was advertised, along with her 4 siblings, on a piece of cardboard nailed quickly to a telephone pole with one bent nail on a Saturday morning, right up there with 2 garage sales signs; scrawled in two words with a magic marker were: “Kittens Free” and a telephone number. We chose the black one with yellow eyes and a funny habit which she maintained until her last days, of rocking back and forth on her front paws right in your face as if teasing us lying in bed to get up and dance. That sold her to us.

Ten years later and 1600 miles farther west, this same cat now lay gasping against the wheel of the camper. I saw that she was terribly broken and in great pain. A call to the local vet and I had her in the truck heading into Goleta. When I picked her up to lay her on the towel that I had put over the seat, she moaned louder but did not fight me. Her eyes looked other worldy, as if she were already leaving this climate and galaxy. Blood and bits of stool clung to her thick long coat, now very dirty. When I put her down in the seat, she curled into a ball and stared fixedly at her back end. She never moved for the entire journey.

The vet, a kindly man, finished giving two dogs their shots and then came out to the truck with me. Not prone to allowing strangers touching her, BJ did not resist when he took her up and carried her, like a small rug, into the office and placed her on an aluminum examining table, one that reminded me more of a site for autopsies than for examining live things. I also decided not to resist. He felt her backside as blood began to smear the clean aluminum finish. Soon, parts of bloody stools, hair and grime began to coat it. The right rear leg seemed to his touch, to be broken and detached. “Yes,” he said, “she’s been hit by a car or something.” He checked her mouth and told me by the condition of the gums being so white that she was in extreme shock.

I could not decide what to do so I told him I would talk to my wife and get back to him. He offered to give her a sedative and make up a small cage for her. I patted BJ on the head; she looked bewildered and very different, staring at her back quarters. Her yellow eyes I no longer recognized.

We called the vet after an hour and he said she was fading now. He advised putting her down. We agreed and decided not to go back. I couldn’t and Sandy wouldn’t, not wanting to see BJ in this condition. I called the next morning and the vet informed me that he had gone back to her cage after we spoke and put her down. He said we made the right decision and that she should not suffer more.

Like any person, BJ had likes and dislikes, a fact any pet owner or people working with animals knows. She liked her hard cat food mixed with the mush in the can: tuna, thank you. She liked to sleep on a heating pad we kept on “low” and under the quilt of our bed. She could leap on the bed and land directly on that pad 9 times out of 10. She liked to be scratched on the left side of her face and behind the right ear. She liked to be up, off the ground, for surveillance and safety purposes. She had two cat acquaintences in the neighborhood. One she liked and let her eat from the bowl of cat food; the other she despised and would leap from the camper on to his matted grey back if he came too close. What she did not like? Being left alone when we took a trip of 2 or 3 days. She saw the suitcases come out and she freaked, hiding everywhere to forestall our departure. When we came home the sign of her anger would be measured in the amount of hair we found on the carpet and couch.

Pets are powerful presences in our lives. I wept when I called my wife to say BJ had been put down by the vet. That surprised me. Animals, especially pets of long standing, really complete part of us. Perhaps they give some expression to our own animal nature. They are an other-world presence that is much a part of us. Pets accommodate themselves so beautifully to us and I think we become a little like them over time. Witness the great success of the film, Best in Show.

The house is much emptier now with her passing. Funny, though. As I rise from my chair I hear her crying in the garage to be let in. Time to eat. I better prepare her bowl, just in case. Mix it up good; she is very fussy. “Here BJ; C’mon girl.”

Parentless at 60

Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

I write this on a plane flying home from Cleveland, Ohio to Santa Barbara, California. My three brothers, one sister and I have just buried my mother. Now we, as well as my wife whose parents had died years ago, begin the new year parentless. She was 87 and ready to die; hospice care helped this happen. No tubes, no probing, no medical extension, just death, in her own home, in her own bed, with my care-giver brother at her side, holding her hand. She looked up at him with great intensity, took a breath, and left the room. Some have said we are now orphans. I don’t feel orphaned; our sons and granddaughter save us from such a designation.

Three weeks before her passing, I awoke at 4 a.m. to a voice: “Buy a plane ticket and fly to Cleveland.” That was all. A pithy presentiment, perhaps from her. I spent five days with her, now bedridden, taking small amounts of morphine to ease the pain from interior afflictions. I did something I had never done before: I helped to feed her frail body, she, who fed me decades ago. Tiny bites of a sandwich, slow sips of liquid through a straw. She had grown smaller, as if to make more room for herself in the bed. She said nothing, just looked at me with those clear watery blue eyes I remembered as an infant.

These last days she spoke little. Silence was better preparation for crossing over than was sound. Recently, my brother Bill told us, she had been pointing into the air, addressing deceased relatives, her own husband dead now 8 years, her own mother. At death’s threshold she had begun looking to us more like her mother, Nanny we called her, as if the two were becoming one now. She seemed to have more in common and more traffic with the dead than with the living. Perhaps she was now able to eavesdrop on their eternal conversations. She died two weeks after I returned home.

She raised four sons and a daughter under sometimes rough conditions. She did it well, calmly, selflessly, without remorse or anger or hope for signs of gratitude. We all obliged. She asked for nothing, but preferred to give, to serve others. She was always embarrassed and delighted by gifts to her, often then putting them away and out of mind. Her quality of mercy was never strained when we misbehaved. We siblings began telling stories to one another at her wake, of things remembered we had never shared before. Stories fluttered around her casket. We thought the narratives were about us; but they really highlighted Mary Elizabeth.

Some kind of genius hovered around her. She played the piano, preferring Chopin’s piano compositions over all others. She read with the avarice of a greedy graduate student. I watched her at a young age, fascinated by her ability to sit still as long as she did. She was taking a break, of course, from the chaos that was us. I began reading avidly at age six and have made my living teaching what I read and think about. She defined my vocation with the same unassuming quietness in which she did everything. If passion, even joy, can be muted and still be affective, she had mastered that method.

The wake was a full house and then some. For a woman who did not get out much in her later years, she still knew how to draw a crowd of Irish relatives, friends—souls from her past that emerged to draw close to her silence in the casket, to touch her cold hand, to lean and whisper something to her. As always, her response was a quiet one.

At her funeral mass, I said a few words, standing by her blue coffin. My sister chose the color, mother’s favorite. I said that she had found one of the secrets to life’s mystery: serve others. The rewards are much more lasting than in being served. We buried her in a “double deep” grave, on top of my father who had been waiting patiently, in silence, for 8 years to have his Mary with him once more. She got top bunk. She had earned it. Now their marriage is complete. Across the way, on this cold Ohio afternoon in December, bagpipes play for another funeral procession burying their dead. We got the best of both worlds: an Irish priest speaking to us by our mother’s grave, and the music of the Celts across the way, leading in Orphic joy our mother into the earth. Planned? She had just that quiet power.

After a meal for all relatives at a local restaurant, we headed home, my brothers, sister and I. On the power line behind the house, we were greeted by a large, majestic hawk, looking down at us, bemused. Mother? In so many traditions, birds are carriers of the souls of the dead. We looked at one another in the driveway. None of us had seen this species in all the years we lived in this house. Like a bird, we said; she was just that strong. We waved to the hawk’s majesty, who responded by opening those glorious feathered wings and flying north, towards Lake Erie, and beyond.

Restless Cardinal

Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

She began on a Monday morning
flying at my study window
in reckless beak-smashing abandon

striking the glass twice at a time to
protest the twitchy tails of our cats
inside watching her orange beak
tick the glass into shattering
then
repeat the beat of anger and red outrage.

No stopping her as hour passed into
hour until exhausted she rested on a
nearby laurel bush and
then again
beak first
hurled her fluttering angry
feathered outrage against the glass

and Monday, tired folded into dusk.

Tuesday began at first light with
the quick double peck beat of beak
against the glass that refused to cease
until she in her mind
brought the entire pane of glass
to ruin. Her male partner sat
by numb with fear against her energy.

I went out to move the iron gate
she launched from to tire her more
quickly but it did no good-

On Wednesday she was back
with worn beak and savage
black eyes
cats or no cats
for she rapped the window
in senseless acts of futile failure.

But now
I saw the glass as a mirror
of my own fluttering wings
with a futility that matched a failed
sense of a life grown violent in
dim reflection when the presence
of cats was enough to break open
the heart one fatal blow at a time
until
exhausted spent even I rested
on a nearby budding spring branch
and listened for the great silent rush
of no mind and my breathing ceased
until Friday.

Archilochus Psychopompos:
The Ruby-throated Hummingbird as Mentor

Dr. Stephen Y. Wilkerson, M.D.

I have hummingbirds. They’re on my back porch. Well, all right—to speak accurately, they’re never actually on the porch. Like so many divine thoughtlets, incarnated instantaneously and unpredictably, they come and go joyfully and with expectable uncertainty. But one of their endearing and enduring glories is that they’re never really on anything, any more than an idea ever rests, momentarily out of breath, upon one of the brain’s many undulating convolutions. Indeed, there’s something similarly magical and miraculous about thoughts and hummingbirds. Both are suspended invisibly—tiny acts of God—just long enough for one to focus on them one’s attention, before they vanish. Where they go is anyone’s guess, but that they are not obliterated is quite clear, given their proclivity to startle by their reappearance as soon as their existence has been safely forgotten. Both arrive noiselessly, or at least with a minimum of fanfare. For all of the delicate din promised by its name, the hummingbird authenticates its presence peacefully, serenely, soundlessly. And, like a thought, it leaves its origins as great a mystery as its ultimate destination. Both, also, seem equally at home in all dimensions. Up, down, right, left, forwards, backwards—one can no more restrict a hummingbird to a position in space than one can an idea. Like thoughts, hummingbirds are not bound by the three dimensions. They are, rather, creatures of time. And not of time, even, but of the moment, of the instant. They live in the twinkling that arches over time and exists outside it.

There are, perhaps, few animals less forbidding and more harmless in appearance than hummingbirds. And it is here, it seems, that they part ways with thoughts. Tiny and almost as insubstantial as an idea, hummingbirds are ever innocuous and innocent in a way not invariably true of thoughts. And what of the coruscating brilliance of their colors? They are often described, according to Bachelard, “as a jewel in flight,” their image prefigured by the “thousand immobile fires in precious stones” (238). But gems, Bachelard goes on to explain, “are the earth’s stars.” And “Stars are the sky’s diamonds.” As a result, “There is earth in the firmament and sky on earth” (223). Birds, Jung tells his readers on a number of occasions, “symbolize spirits” (538). How apposite that the gem-like hummingbird should act as an intermediary between humans and nature, a sort of Lilliputian ambassador from the Cosmos. For what, in fact, is the meaning of spirit? According to Raff, one of its preeminent attributes is “spontaneous movement and activity” (7). Energy—activity—this is the quintessence of hummingbirdness. Nothing but an ultrahigh-speed camera can slow the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. It eats neither other animals nor plants, but sips pure energy, the nectar of flowers. Just as it is attracted by red, the color of life, so ruby is emblazoned about its neck. Its wings and upper body are green, the emblem of vitality and new growth. Vigorous life, however, is abundant, from the proverbial industry of the ant to the bamboo which, Annie Dillard notes, “can grow three feet in twenty-four hours” (165). What is it about the diminutive hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), tiniest of all the feathered creatures, that is so profoundly fascinating? “We,” Thoreau laments, “have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven” (133). It is, Dillard remarks poignantly and with sadness, a “benumbed world” (170). The hummingbird, I believe, shows how to remember heaven. It helps us wake, in Dillard’s words, “to mystery” (4).

How does this smallest of birds accomplish its alchemy? “Philosophically considered,” Emerson explains, “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul” (22). It is, unfortunately, all too easy for the Soul, our self-consciousness, to drift away from Nature, everything, according to Emerson, that is “the NOT ME” (22). What ultimately animates a rapprochement between Nature and Soul is—spirit. In this case Nature acts in its own behalf: “Nature is the symbol of spirit” (Emerson 31). Nature itself becomes the philosopher’s stone that enables this wondrous transformation. “One finds it in the open country, in the village and in the town. It is in everything which God created” (Dillard 276). As a colorful, vibrant, animated—and perfectly nonthreatening—manifestation of spirit, the hummingbird is uniquely suited to promote exploration of mystery, remembering heaven. So far from being an obstacle, its size is an advantage to its work, for “A fairy is small creating large” (Bachelard 225). “Each animal,” James Hillman explains, “is a psychopompos” (288). The hummingbird, I think, has a special facility for guiding souls back to Nature, for reuniting humanity with an experience of heaven. “It would appear,” to Bachelard, “that deep, deep down, the human psyche is in real need of a mentor” (306). Such a mentor is necessary “for one to let go of one’s quotidian concerns”—so that one may travel to that place “where it is possible to learn the postures of serenity” (307). In this world of bottomless mystery, of infinite beauty, of “universal grace” (Emerson 31), it is a sober reality that, nevertheless, “plenty is amiss” (Dillard 180). What is needed is a map back to the “forgotten heaven,” a psychopompous, a mentor. And, so—I have hummingbirds. They’re on my back porch.

Works Cited

Bachelard, Gaston. Earth and Reveries of Will: An Essay On the Imagination of Matter. Trans. Kenneth Haltman. Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 2002.

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper, 1999.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. 21-56.

Hillman, James. “The Animal Kingdom in the Human Dream.” Eranos Jahrbuch. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1983. 279-309.

Jung, Carl Gustave. “VII. The Dual Mother.” Trans. R. F. C. Hull. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. 2nd Ed. Vol. 5. Bollingen Series 20. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. 306-93.

Raff, Jeffrey. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination. York Beach, Maine:

Nicolas-Hays, 2000.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Walden.” Thoreau: Walden and Other Writings. New York: Bantam, 1971. 105-351.

Milky Whey’s Dream

Emmie Lou was walking along Gumdrop Avenue in the town of Clickity-Clack with her two pups Rufus and Rosco. It was a very hot day. She saw a white blur ahead. Emmie Lou blinked hard to see if it was something real.

As Emmie Lou got closer she saw that a pretty teen-age girl was coming towards them wheeling something large and white on a platform.

“Hey!” Emmie Lou said, “Is that a cow?”

“This is my cow,” the girl said. “Her name is Milky Whey.”

“How do you do, Milky Whey?” Emmie Lou introduced herself and her two pups.

“What is she made of?” Emmie Lou gave Milky Whey a gentle pat.

“I made her out of hopes and dreams and papier-mâché,” the girl said.

“You must be an Artist,” Emmie Lou said.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Well, she looks really real.”

“She is real,” the girl said. “She is just playing at being a cow until the world is ready.”

“Ready? Ready for what?”

“Ready for the time when Milky Whey can breathe the fresh air and smell the flowers.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Emmie Lou hadn’t understood a thing. “If she ever needs a good home, you can count on us. Here’s my card.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The girl put the card in her pocket.

“Bye for now.” Emmie Lou and her two pups watched the girl with the papier-mâché cow move on down the street.

A couple of weeks later the phone rang: “Hi! Do you remember me? I met you and your pups with Milky Whey on Gumdrop Avenue.”

“Oh I sure do. How is Milky Whey?”

“She’s looking for a new home.”

“Bring her right over,” Emmie Lou said. “Who shall I tell the doorman I’m expecting?”

“Angel.” There was a click at the other end of the phone.

Before Emmie Lou had a chance to tell Rufus and Rosco that a friend was moving in, she found herself greeting Milky Whey as Angel wheeled her through the doorway. “She’s bigger than I remembered,” Emmie Lou whispered.

“Yes, she’s life-size. Your apartment will be perfect. There’s not much furniture so she can move around.”

“Move around?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Angel said.

Rufus and Rosco were delighted to have a new friend. They couldn’t stop wagging their tails.

Taking one long last look at Milky Whey, Angel said, “She’s a treasure. Remember that she can be a wonderful friend.” And moving towards the door, “The only thing is, you must find a new home for Milky Whey in one year.”

“Why is that?”

“She wants to spread the message.”

“Oh yes of course.” Emmie Lou was at a complete loss.

“I must be going. Bye for now.”

Emmie Lou and her pups watched the girl walk down the hall and on into the elevator.

“We’ll take good care of Milky Whey. We understand cows. Bye for now . . . Angel,” Emmie Lou said as the elevator door closed.

Emmie Lou thought she heard a lonely ‘Moo’ sound. She turned around but there was only Milky Whey, the papier-mache cow.

Milky Whey fit right into Emmie Lou’s home. Rufus and Rosco loved her. They always wanted to be near her. They must have kept bumping into her because she would never stay in one spot. Emmie Lou’s friends thought she was great fun. They marveled at how real she looked. A few would even pet her. They felt more light-hearted with a cow listening in on the conversation. Milky Whey brought happiness.

Emmie Lou and her pups slept in the same room with Milky Whey. One night, during Emmie Lou’s sleep, she heard a cowbell. Turning toward the tinkling bell she saw to her amazement that Milky Whey was walking. She was walking on air. “What are you doing?” Emmie Lou thought.

“Hi, Emmie Lou. I’m stretching my legs a bit”.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Milky Whey’s Spirit. I’m waiting to come into the world.”

The papier-mâché cow was standing, facing the bed. The Spirit Cow was hovering in the air. Rufus and Rosco were sleeping peacefully.

All of a sudden, Milky Whey’s Spirit threw back her head and sang out a loud: “SOY!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“SOY!” she wailed again along with a brief tap-step with her hooves.

“I didn’t catch your drift.”

“SOY!” crooned Milky Whey’s Spirit, “Its My Dream.”

“I thought this was MY dream,” Emmie Lou said.

“I can dream in your dream too. Dreams are wonderful places to meet.”

“Okay. But what do you mean by “SOY?”

“SOY is hope! SOY is love! SOY is a miracle! SOY is the plant of peace! It’s a legume, a protein vegetable. It’s easy to grow and good to eat. It can taste like almost anything: meats, cheese, milk and yogurt. It could save lives. It can keep our water pure, the grass green and the forest intact. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

A pasture suddenly appeared around Milky Whey’s Spirit. It was full of bright green plants with bushy tops. “Isn’t it beautiful?

“Once, not too long ago, I was born on a farm as a real cow. The sun was shining. The flowers were blooming. The grass was growing. Our cow family and the other animals all felt like brothers and sisters. We were happy. But as I grew older I became aware that there were shadows. One came in the afternoon to our barn door. My Father was taken away and he never came back. Another shadow came early in the morning. My Mother was taken away; she never came back. And then one day, the shadow fell on me. I was put in a truck. That truck door shut and everything was blackness. My life on earth was over.” A shudder ran through Milky Whey’s Spirit and a tear gently ran down her cheek.

Emmie Lou wiped a tear from her eyes and gently said, “Milky Whey, now you are here with us. It’s you and I and Rufus and Rosco. We’re in this together.”

“Yes, but I’m here in spirit only. That’s why I have a dream. I dream that someday, I will be a real cow again – grazing on a real farm – with my real animal brothers and sisters.” Milky Whey’s voice grew stronger, “And when that day comes, there will be SOY! In the fields – SOY! On the mountains – SOY! On the dinner table! My heart yearns for such a day. In the meantime, there is hunger in the world.”

“Milky Whey’s Spirit, let’s go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow, the sun will shine.”

“Yes, Angel told me to try to stay light-hearted. That’s why she made me out of papier-mâché. She tries to promote cow-appreciation in an upbeat way. Some of her artist friends made designer cows, which stood all over Clickety-Clack City. Maybe you saw them? It’s late I know. I will bid you a goodnight.”

“Goodnight Milky Whey’s Spirit…AND…. is there anything you want me to do?

“Give Milky Whey to someone who will be kind to her. And remember….”SOY!”

The cow-spirit turned towards the window – took a deep spirit-breath – there was a tinkling of a cowbell and then…. nothing.

Emmie Lou put on the light. Her pups Rufus and Rosco were still sleeping, but she saw that the papier-mâché Milky Whey was now facing the open window.

The next day Emmie Lou noticed that it had been almost a year since Milky Whey had come to live with her and her pups. Emmie Lou knew exactly the right new home for Milky Whey – but first she wanted to celebrate having Milky Whey as a friend. She would have a party.

People came from far and wide – there was Renata, there was Bill, there was Gerhard, there was Jill, there was Jane and Harry – Doris and Larry and many others. Emmie Lou had presents and laughter and cake and fruit. Barbara sang a song. Andy acted a skit. Gretchen told a story. Rufus and Rosco ate almost a whole cake when no one was looking. Milky Whey wore a red ribbon and had a red balloon tied around her neck. Emmie Lou gave out Milky Whey tee shirts. The guests all threw confetti and then the party was over.

The next day Milky Whey waited patiently for the two moving men. She still had the red balloon around her neck. She looked so alone standing in the lobby. Rufus and Rosco didn’t understand where their friend had gone. Emmie Lou gave Milky Whey a big hug and a kiss. She thanked Milky Whey for being a part of their lives and whispered in her papier-mâché ear that Emmie Lou and the pups would never ever forget her. She thought she heard a faint ‘Moo’ as she entered the elevator. Because she was crying she didn’t turn around.

If you want to visit Milky Whey she is at a fabric store in Clickity- Clop, the next town over. She stands in their window. You’ll find her if you really want to. Emmie Lou’s friend Dana Dee runs the store and is watching over Milky Whey and says that she is really happy. All the fabrics in the store – the many colors of blue and violet and red and yellow -- surround her like flowers. She visits with all the people who are coming and going so she isn’t lonesome. The workers in the store dress her in fashion to celebrate each holiday.

She’s worn golden ribbons, a Halloween mask, flowers around her neck, a Santa’s hat with mistletoe pinned on it and now a floppy sunhat with all kind of fruits on the brim. She’s bringing joy to people’s hearts. At night her spirit sings with great gusto, “SOY! SOY! SOY!”. If you listen very closely, you might hear her hooves doing their little tap-dance. She knows that in a year’s time she will be visiting another place. And she knows that someday – she hopes not too long in the future – that all humans and cows will be friends.

A Palace for Peepers

Peepers was born in New York City. John, the handyman in the apartment building where I live, found her huddled near a large flowerpot in our garden. Before I could say “no” her placed he in my arms.

Peepers is a pigeon. Baby pigeons are called “squeakers” by wildlife rescuers. However, Peepers didn’t squeak. She peeped. That’s how Peepers got her name.

Peepers couldn’t have been more than three weeks old. Her pink chest was almost bare. The top of her head was white. The edges of her black wings were white. She had no tail, just a few wisps of feathers. She looked like a tiny bald eagle. She must have fallen out of her nest.

I knew Peepers was healthy because her mother was still interested in her. John had seen her trying to feed Peepers. We wanted to put the baby back in her nest. That was the right thing to do with a wild bird. We looked and looked but couldn’t find it. How could we leave Peepers on the ground? Stray cats often wandered through our garden and would attack a baby bird.

And so we had to take over where nature let go.

I brought Peepers upstairs to my apartment. I settled her in an old gerbil cage by the bathroom window. I wanted her to have a view of the garden below. Then I called Chris. She works at the animal hospital nursing wild animals back to health. Chris couldn’t see us for a couple of days. She said in the meantime, “Get some puppy dry food. Soak it in boiling water, until it’s soft. Feed Peepers this mixture three times a day.”

I wrapped Peepers in an old undershirt to keep her calm. I tried and tried to pry open her beak to insert the puppy morsels. She squirmed and squirmed, but only swallowed a little food. Then, somehow, we stumbled on a feeding technique that worked.

I put my hand in front of Peepers, fingers pointing downward. She put her beak between two of my fingers. It must have reminded her of her mother’s beak because she opened her beak wide. I could insert the puppy food.

I didn’t like the idea of feeding dog food to a baby bird, but Peepers love it. She chowed it down, especially when the mush was lightly dipped in wild birdseed. Eating became a happy event that we both looked forward to. I didn’t have to pry her locked beak open. Her wings quivered in excitement after every beak full. Peepers ate so much that she seemed to grow bigger with each meal. She would take such large helpings, she would have to walk around in a circle and flap her wings so the food could travel down her long neck.

Two days and six feedings later, we went to see Chris. Chris weighed Peepers and checked her for diseases. She opened Peepers’ little beak and looked inside. It was pink as a whistle. She looked at some of Peeper’s poo, through a microscope. Chris said that Peepers was in tiptop condition. She would grow into a fine, big bird. “There might be one problem. You probably won’t be able to release her on the New York streets when she is able to fly. Baby birds need parents to show them the ropes.” I understood. Peepers would not know how to fend for herself in the big city. I would always have to feed her.

“There might be another way, however,” Chris told me.

“If you put her with older pigeons that are being cared for she could learn from them. Peepers could be really lucky, and learn enough to be released successfully. She could be released with Squeaks.”

Squeaks, another orphaned pigeon was also Chris’ patient. She was about the same age as Peepers. If Squeaks and Peepers were released together they would do better on the New York City streets. A little pigeon alone would have no chance against the big bully pigeons in their competition for food. Squeaks and Peepers, as a pair, could put up a better fight.

The more I got to know Peepers, the more I loved her. When tail feathers came in she would spread them out like a fan and comb each feather from bottom to top. when I came into the room to feed her or just to say hello, Peepers danced in her cage and fluffed up her feathers. She pecked at my face, giving me kisses with her pink beak. But Peepers was a wild bird and I knew she needed to be outdoors. I still wished I could keep her.

We met Nan a couple of weeks later in the animal hospital waiting room. Peepers was getting her weekly check-up. Nan was there with a carrying case in her lap. We started talking and I found out that Nan was the woman who had rescued Squeaks. The carrying case held none other than Squeaks the pigeon! Nan was bringing him in for a check-up too. Nan said maybe Peepers and Squeaks could get together at her place. She would let us know. She had the brightest smile. I hoped she would say, “Yes!” Peepers seemed to like her. She kept trying to peck at the big diamond ring that Nan wore. Nan didn’t mind. Peepers must have thought it was sparkling puppy morsels.

The phone rang the next day. Nan was inviting Peepers to come live with her. Peepers would be with Squeaks and some other pigeons in a newly built birdhouse.

I knew this was an invitation I couldn’t refuse. It was best for Peepers.

“Where shall I bring her,” I asked.

“The Old Hooper Cooper Mansion!”

“We’ll be there tomorrow with bells and whistles.”

I had always passed the Old Hooper Cooper Mansion on the bus going to work. To think that it would soon be Peepers’ home! I went to sleep that night dreaming of room after room of luxury. Of silks, and satins. Of marble floors and stained glass windows. Of curlicue furniture. Of vases of blue, red, green, and yellow flowers filling rooms with sunshine and color. And little Peepers in a golden cage, munching birdseed while watching colored TV. It was a happy night.

In the morning, I checked on Peepers who was in the bathroom practicing her flying skills. She could make it from the cage to the towel rack with ease but not yet to the higher shower curtain rod. She didn’t know that her life was about to change.

“This must be it,” I said to the taxi driver. We had stopped in front of a building that took up half the block. The Old Hooper Cooper Mansion. Peepers’ bright future was about to begin.

I thought the building looked grand and stately like a church. It had a tall tower over the entrance and heavy, wooden doors. Two workmen were busy repairing the front steps. I told them I was here to see Nan Schmidt. They pointed to an open door at the side of the building.

Carrying Peepers, I went to that door. There was a very steep ramp going down into darkness. I was afraid I’d lose my step. So I called,

“Nan?”

Nan came out of the darkness up the ramp. She was wearing old blue jeans and that bright smile.

“Hi!” she said. “Come this way.”

“I don’t think I can.”

Waving her hand she told me to go back to the main entrance.

In the front hallway, there were two more workmen sanding the floor. They scowled as I passed by.

I heard Nan call, “Keep going and open the large door to your right. We’re remodeling.”

Everywhere I looked it was like the aftermath of a hurricane.

I made my way through piles of wood, bags of plaster and cement rubble. Wires peeked out through the walls.

“Where do I go next?” I shouted.

“You’re almost at the steel door. Just open it and I’ll meet you outside,” Nan yelled from somewhere.

This was not the beautiful abode that I dreamt of the night before. I continued on through the debris and reached the steel door. I pushed it open.

Nan was there!

We were in a garden. Instead of flowers, it was filled with boards and pieces of plaster, large tools of every description, buckets and wooden horses.

She pointed past the rubble, “Over there is the bird house.”

Peepers was very quiet in her carrying case.

I took a few stumbling steps. There in a small clearing, I saw a glorious structure covered in chicken wire. It must have been 15 feet tall.

The Palace!

There wasn’t a golden cage and Peepers wouldn’t have colored TV as I had imagined, but it was Heaven!

Inside were three other pigeons.

Nan unlatched the birdhouse door and I carefully stepped inside. The three pigeons watched silently from their perches. I sat on a small bench and unpacked Peepers and her packet of puppy food. The pigeons eyed us as Peepers and I did our mealtime duet. Peepers ate excitedly from my hand not paying any attention to the new sights and sounds or to her feathered neighbors.

The three pigeons continued to study us.

Nan introduced them. Pierre was an apricot beauty. He had been raised to be eaten but had been saved from being served on a French restaurant plate. Puffy, the butterball couldn’t fly and was waiting for her wing feathers to grow back. And then there was Squeaks. Squeaks, a youngster like Peepers, with similar black and white coloring, glanced at Peepers and then looked away. It was not love at first sight as I had hoped.

I left Peepers in the birdhouse and stood outside with Nan, trying to give Peepers emotional support. At first Peepers flew towards me only to be thrown back by the chicken wire. She then frantically flew to the other side of the spacious birdhouse, only to be met with the same chicken wire blockade.

Peepers’ world had changed from what it had been just hours before. She nervously sat on the small bench that we had shared. She looked at the other pigeons. They looked back. Only Puffy, who couldn’t fly, remained on Peepers’ level. Squeaks and Pierre stood stately on the highest perch looking down. Their sitting on that highest perch told Peepers, below, that they were more important – more powerful than she was. In the bird world – the higher, the more supreme. Peepers was not on the ground but she wasn’t at the top either.

“Where will she find her place in the Palace?” I wondered. “Who would befriend her?”

I knew it was time to go. I said good-by to Peepers and I slowly followed Nan up the ramp into the twilight. I was leaving precious Peepers with generous Nan. And I was leaving with a grateful but sad heart. Would Peepers learn all she needed to know from her fellow pigeons?

Nan gave me a hug. “You can visit anytime you want.” She then excused herself and headed back into the mansion’s jumbled insides.

I visited Peepers whenever I could. I watched her get bigger and stronger as the weeks went by. She had learned to eat seed on her own without being hand fed.

On one visit I noticed a new pigeon in the palace. His name was Hubert. He was jet black with an injured wing. He needed a safe place to stay until it mended. I could see Hubert liked Peepers and Peepers liked Hubert. They always sat together on a perch and Nan said that they snuggled at night. It seemed that Hubert was going to be the ideal partner for Peepers’ future.

One day, Nan told me that she thought that Peepers and Hubert were ready to leave the Palace. Nan opened the door. Peepers didn’t know what to do. Hubert knew all right, but he didn’t want to leave the friendly, cozy world of the Palace.

They just sat.

The Palace door was opened wide every day. There was a big world out there with a tempting big sky above.

Peepers and Hubert still did not budge.

Finally on the fifth day, it was Peepers who dared to leave the Palace to fly to a tree nearby. Hubert waited several minutes and then followed. The two sat in that tree for a long, long time.

And then they flew away.

They were doing what they were born to do – enjoying the trees and the skies and soaring with the wind.

Hopefully, Peepers will never forget the people who cared for her in apartment and Palace.

But Peepers is a wild bird.

The streets, towering buildings, parks and the freedom of New York City skies are her true Palace.