PRETTY BIRD
It was a wonderful dream. Thousands, maybe millions of people were watching him in the spotlight. Even more important, they were listening. They were listening to him talk. Sometimes he would say something funny and they would laugh. He was really going to surprise them. Now he was going to sing!
He spread his wings out wide and –
“Whitey? Are you okay?”
He opened his eyes and shook the sleep fluffiness from his feathers. “Okay.”
His person, Ellie, smiled. “I love when you do that.” she said. “It sounds like you really understand me. I’m sorry if I woke you up, you were making little squawky noises. I thought you might be sick.”
“Okay,” he said again. He wanted to tell her about his dream, but he knew that people didn’t think parakeets could really talk. And it was true; most parakeets could only copy what they heard.
He was different.
When he was still in the nest with his brothers and sisters, his mother told him that his baby feathers were the same colors as his grandfather. The same blue with a white band around his middle and the same long white feathers on his wings and tail. “I don’t know if you’ll have the same special talent as he did,” she said, “but magic runs in the family. If you find you can understand humans and talk like them, be very, very careful who you tell.”
She had warned about other things as he grew, but he really hadn’t understood and didn’t think too much about it until he came to live with Ellie and her family. Ellie named him White Wings, but everyone called him Whitey, which was okay, but in his dreams he was always White Wings because it sounded more like a name for someone famous.
Ellie was in fifth grade now, and wanted to be a teacher when she grew up. Whitey was her first student. She taught him to say “Hello” and “Pretty bird”, then a lot of other words. It was so easy that he had to pretend to work hard to learn. Sometimes he would watch videos on the internet with her. He especially liked the ones with birds who talked or sang along with music.
He wanted to do that too. He wanted to do it so much that he dreamed about it every night.
But he couldn’t tell Ellie.
“Okay,” he said. “Pretty bird.”
“Love you,” she said. “Have to go. Breakfast is ready; I’ll see you after school.” She unlatched his cage door just like she did every morning so he could fly around. Then she left and closed the door of her room behind her.
Whitey waited until he heard Ellie leave for school and her mom and dad leave for work, then he flew to a perch Ellie had put by the window for him. It was a warm day, so it would be easy to talk to his friend, Pinecone, through the window screen.
He chirped three times, waited, and chirped again. An owl flapped out of the trees and landed outside the window.
Pinecone stretched. “Is it morning already?”
“For a while now. My people are gone.”
“Must be funny to have your own humans.”
“Doesn’t seem funny to me. It seems funny to me to fly around all night and sleep during the day.”
“It’s what owls do,”
“I know. Ellie read me a book about all kinds of birds.”
“Hmmm… Maybe it’s nice to have your own humans.” Pinecone tipped his head to the side. “You look a bit tired yourself. Have you been having those dreams again?”
“All the time. They’re really fun dreams, but when I wake up I feel even worse about having to keep my magic a secret. I almost feel like I’m lying to Ellie.” He sighed. “And it must be nice to be famous.”
“Famous?” Pinecone said, “like when everyone knows who you are and talks about you?”
“Right. Like on television or the internet.”
“I don’t know a lot about those things. Why is famous good?”
Whitey shifted from one foot to the other. “I… I don’t know. It just is. Everyone knows you’re really good at something and they like you because you’re good at it.”
“Humph!” Pinecone said. “Seems to me people should like you just because you’re you. Ellie loves you and she doesn’t even know about your magic.” He blinked slowly. “Why haven’t you told her?”
“My mother made it sound scary to tell anyone.”
“Scary?”
“She said that humans wouldn’t understand about the magic and if they found out they might take me away from my family and…and study me. She didn’t say what that meant, but it sounded bad. Whatever it is, I don’t ever want to leave Ellie.”
Pinecone nodded. “If owls had humans, I’d want one like Ellie. I don’t think she would ever let you go away.”
“I hope not, but I’m going to keep my magic secret just to be sure.”
“Sounds wise to me.” Pinecone yawned. “Sorry, little day bird, I didn’t get much sleep before you chirped.”
“I won’t wake you so early tomorrow. I promise. Thanks for listening.”
“Welcome.” Pinecone yawned again. “Tomorrow.” Then he flapped his wings and flew away to his favorite spruce tree.
White Wings watched people walk by outside and counted red cars. He liked red cars and counting helped him stop worrying. Pinecone was right, keeping magic a secret was the wise thing to do. Keeping a big secret was hard, but nothing was more important than Ellie.
That night, after Ellie finished her homework, Ellie and her mom and dad watched television in the living room. Whitey sat on Ellie’s shoulder. Dad was looking for something good for them all to watch when he stopped on a show that was about cats doing really silly things. It was so funny that Whitey laughed instead of chirping.
“Whitey!” Ellie said and held up her hand so that he could hop onto it. “I didn’t know you could do that! Mom, did you hear that? Whitey copied us laughing!”
“He’s an amazing little guy,” Mom said. “I’ve never heard a parakeet who talks as well as he does. You’ve done a great job teaching him.”
“He’s so smart, he’s learning things just by hearing them, aren’t you Whitey?”
Whitey bobbed his head to give himself time to think. He was trying to be careful, but he had come very close to saying something about how silly furry animals were. No parakeet could do that without magic.
“Pretty bird,” he said.
Later, the house was very quiet. Ellie was asleep and so were mom and dad in their room down the hall.
White Wings was dreaming one of his usual dreams. the one where he was on a stage and there was an audience listening and laughing and clapping, but something was bothering him.
Something was wrong. Someone in the audience was smoking a cigarette!
He leaned close to the microphone. “Excuse me,” he said. “Smoking is not allowed in here, and besides, it’s bad for your health. Will the person who is smoking please put the cigarette out now or take it outside?”
Where the audience was sitting was dark. He couldn’t see if anyone moved, but the smell of smoke didn’t go away. It got stronger.
That’s rude, he thought. The smoker must be blowing smoke toward the stage. He was just about to say something about bad manners when a curl of smoke went right across his face. He coughed, then coughed harder…
The spotlight was gone, so were the stage and the audience. But there was still smoke.
There shouldn’t be smoke! There wasn’t a lot, but he knew where smoke came from.
Fire, he thought. There’s a fire somewhere. I have to tell Ellie!
He ran back and forth on his perch, chirping and squawking, but Ellie didn’t wake up.
He jumped from his perch to the front of his cage. The door was closed, but he had watched Ellie open it so many times he was sure he could make it work. It was hard to see what he was doing because only a little moonlight came through the window, but he used his beak to pull and wiggle the latch until the door fell open.
He beat his wings and jumped into the air. He had never flown in the dark before and he didn’t have big nighttime eyes like Pinecone’s, but he couldn’t worry about that.
Fire was bad and everyone but him was asleep.
He flew in a circle, hoping he wouldn’t crash into something. He squawked, but that didn’t seem to be helping.
He had to do it. He had to risk letting Ellie know about his magic.
He flew very close to her pillow. ”Fire!” he said, as loud as he could. “Fire! Ellie wake up! Fire!
“Hmm?” Ellie said in a very sleepy voice. “Whitey? Is that you? Why are you out of your cage? What did you say?”
“Fire! Ellie! Get up! Fire!”
Ellie sat up. “Fire? Where?” She jumped out of bed. “I do smell smoke! Mom! Dad! There’s a fire!” she ran to her door and stopped, thinking about the safety class the fire department had taught in school. She put her hand on the door, then the doorknob. “They’re both cool,” she said.
She opened the door slowly. There wasn’t enough smoke to see, but she could still smell it. She ran down the hall, Whitey flying after her. “Mom! Dad!” She pounded on their door. “There’s a fire somewhere!”
Mom and Dad ran out in their pajamas. “Are you sure?’ Mom asked. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
“The smoke detectors aren’t going off”, Dad said, “but, Ellie’s right, there is smoke. Not much, but I’m going to check downstairs.”
I’ll check up here,” Mom called after him, “Oh, I smell it now; it smells like paper burning. Ellie, take Whitey downstairs and be ready to go outside if Dad says so.”
Whitey landed on top of Ellie’s head. The siren on the smoke detector downstairs started to scream so loudly that Whitey wanted to cover his ears with his wings.
“I should call 911,” Mom said, “just in case.”
The siren stopped. “It’s okay,” Dad called. “The fire is out. Something went wrong with my computer and it started a few papers on fire. Except for the computer and the papers, there’s no damage.”
“Thank goodness!” Mom turned to Ellie “Your room is right over Dad’s office. That’s why you smelled the smoke so soon.”
“It was Whitey,” Ellie said. “He woke me up and told me there was a fire. He got out of his cage and told me there was a fire.”
Whitey hopped onto Ellie’s shoulder. She was going to tell Mom! Mom was a grown-up. This was very bad!
Mom smiled. “He’s such a good boy. He must have been frightened. I’m so glad that he made enough noise to wake you!”
“You don’t understand, Mom. He actually said – ”
“Pretty bird! Pretty bird! Pretty bird!“ Whitey flapped his wings. “Hello, hello!” Pretty bird!”
“You are a very pretty bird,” Mom said, “and a good smoke detector! Ellie, you’d better take Whitey back to your room and try to get some sleep. School tomorrow. I’ll see if Dad needs any help cleaning up.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Whitey was happy that Ellie hadn’t told Mom. Maybe, even if she did tell her, Mom would think it had just been a dream. Maybe Ellie would believe that too.
Ellie closed her bedroom door and sat on her bed. Whitey stepped onto her finger.
“Pretty bird.”
Ellie shook her head. “Oh no, you don’t. You told me there was a fire. You knew what you were saying. We have to talk.”
“Pretty –”
“No. Come on, Whitey. It’s okay.”
Whitey fluffed his feathers and shook them down smooth again. “I can talk,” he said. “I have special magic.”
Then he talked and talked, He told Ellie about his grandfather and his mother’s warnings and his dreams. He told her that he was afraid he would be taken away from her if people knew.
Ellie listened without saying anything. When he was finished, she rubbed a finger under the feathers on his neck the way he really liked. “Oh, Whitey,” she said, “I won’t tell anyone about your magic, and you can be sort of famous if you really want to. Maybe we could do a video or something and you can do tricks and talk, but like an ordinary parakeet – just a little smarter.”
Whitey bobbed his head. “I’d like that.”
A week later, Ellie came home from school carrying something in a big envelope. “I have something to show you, but don’t look yet, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Eyes are closed.”
Whitey could hear papers rustling and a desk drawer opening.
“I have a stand to hold this up somewhere,” Ellie said. “Here it is.”
The desk drawer closed.
“Can I open my eyes yet?”
“Almost. There. Ready.”
Whitey landed on the desk.
“Do you like it?” Ellie asked. “We had to do a report in school about our hero. I did it about you and how you woke me up and stopped a fire. I drew the cover myself, I didn’t print something from the internet. Is it okay?”
“You didn’t…”
“Of course not! I just wrote that you made a lot of noise.”
“I love it!” He flew up to her shoulder. “I love you Ellie.” Being a hero was like being famous, wasn’t it? All of Ellie’s friends and her teacher knew about him now.
That was so great! But…
“Ellie?”
‘Hmm?”
“Can we still do the video?”
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Thank you for another awesome story. The picture looks just like my childhood parakeet companion, also named Whitey. We spent many magical moments as I ran through the house ringing a bell with Whitey chasing me until he landed on my shoulder.