Q

At work, there was a fledgling that fell from it’s roost, lying beside another dead one. It was kept in the office for the day, in a makeshift nest of tissue box, shredded paper and napkins. We couldn’t leave it there for the night because the office was deemed too cold, so I decided to take it home.

Most said it won’t be able to survive, and Rizal said not to get attached to it. Rei-En and I agreed on one thing: that we wouldn’t get attached (it was an ugly deformed naked little thing), but we sure as hell don’t want it to die on us. The fear of it dying was there, but I had an inexplicable hope that it would live if I cared for it properly.

So it was all planned out. In the staff bus, Shuzhen warmed it with her phone light the entire way. On the way home I broke off some twigs and leaves and rested it on them, and then my Grandma and I cut up some old stuff for it’s blankets.

Then I tried to feed it some sugar water soaked white bread with a straw. It flailed around a lot and clicked it beak making small, sad sounds, but wouldn’t eat (or couldn’t? or didn’t know how?) I’m really not sure, but maybe I should have tried putting the food directly into the beak…

To keep it warm I had a table lamp wrapped up in a thin cloth over it, whenever I moved it away from the light it would twitch and thrash around. It was quite terrifying. The rest of the thin cloth I punctured with holes and put over the box in case random insects or ghettos attacked it at night.

That was everything I could think of doing. It was still moving slightly.. pulsing? As if it’s heartbeat was so hard it just moved along with it. Occasionally it would make that tiny whining noise. I named it Afthartos, ancient Greek for athanatos – immortality.

It was not that I loved the bird, or felt like it was my pet. I mean even though I’ve had a score of weird pets before (Zachariah the bluebottle, Anthony the ant, my quails and the rock) (and cried when each of them had to be released/died), I didn’t feel that way towards Afthartos. I didn’t like it.. I just didn’t want it to die.

Negative space: I didn’t care about whether it lived, but I didn’t want it to die.

In a way it was quite selfish. It was just terrifying to think of waking up, lifting it’s blankets and finding it dead. I don’t know what I was expecting or thinking, but it made sense that if I kept watching it, it couldn’t die. So I just sat around prodding food at its beak content with it’s slight movements and eerie infant sounds.

But I suck, so at last I fell asleep, with it beside my bed.

When I woke up a few hours later (I dreamt about psychedelic cats and doors and wailing infants), I felt dread. At that point I thought there was still a good chance it was alive (I THOUGHT I heard the sad tiny sounds), but it was the act of checking that was frankly terrifying. And I’m not very good with confrontation so I laid in bed for half an hour hoping I can fall asleep so I’d have a couple of hours of reprieve.

Then I realized it may die within that couple of hours (and also I’ve left it alone long enough) so I got up and lifted the covers. It wasn’t moving but it wasn’t dead. I’m not sure how to put it. I’ve only imagined two scenarios:

1) I woke up and it’s alive! I’m happy. Go down to the fishing store and get some mashed worms, feed it. It gets stronger. In the late afternoon go down to the park and find a safe place for it to live. 2) It’s surrounded by ants and flies, it’s carcass reeking of death and ferment. I’m traumatized.

But what happened was stranger. It wasn’t moving, but I couldn’t decide if it was dead, or just asleep. I disturbed it slightly to get a reaction, and sometimes I thought I saw movement but then again it was immobile. I didn’t want to assume it was dead, because it might just be breathing too slightly to be noticeable. But if it were dead, then what do I do with it?

So I sat there. Like a fool. And renamed it Lazarus. Then changed my mind because it was a literary prosaic-ism. Then I thought, dead birds themselves are a a literary cliche. Then I felt bad for making a damn fledgling’s death into some macabre literary analysis of sorts like one of those annoying pathos milking literates. Then I thought, maybe it’s not even dead. Because it was morning and my eyes aren’t adjusted to movements.

Now it’s still in it’s nest. Under a lamp. Still hasn’t moved. It is probably dead. I heard the fledgling sounds a few times but it’s probably a wild bird outside or my computer. So… yeah.

Lol I didn’t really expect it to die, so I’m not very prepared for burial. It will probably be in a park with a temporary headstone, in a few hours just in case it decides to move again. I don’t know.

It was a truly ugly bird. Sometimes I can’t even believe it’s a bird. It looks like an alien. It’s repulsive, with it’s raw pink nakedness and crooked claws and bits of unidentified organs. But if you stare at it hard enough at it’s grotesque beak and wrinkled patchy head and although there are a million of these mynahs everywhere – for just awhile it seems like quite a beautiful little thing.