The cage perch swung. Roberto maintained his balance. He hated the timed living room fan blast.
When last year he had continuously squawked in the kitchen, the move came. Now he viewed no big oblong table with occasional dishes, but chairs, large chairs, and a talking box. Roberto liked the talking box although he couldn’t always understand the strange language or the white fuzzy picture, which appeared from time to time.
Roberto’s feathers itched with the all-week wetness hanging in the air. Blasted summer. His beak couldn’t separate all the colors on his breast. He tried. From morning to night his effort proved futile.
When his owner raised a glass of golden liquid the night before to praise the glorious sunrays, Roberto visualized he could FedEx in an artic igloo even though it would be contrary to his South American cockatoo heritage.
Roberto had glimpsed the PBS Nature Channel when Edgar, his owner, had forgot to press the correct button sequence on the three remotes. To Roberto the television controlled Edgar, not the other way around. He’d rush in all excited to press the <on> button and then not move from his recliner until late. The talking box glowed even with others appeared.
While tonight’s party represented nothing new, Roberto hated being accosted by men and women with beers in their hands asking through the cage bars: “Polly want a cracker?”
He wished he could say, “Hell no. Taco sprinkled with salsa.” His mother in the wild had led him through a window to taste the delicacy on a hacienda table. He never forgot.
Roberto tucked his head under a wing.
The human feathers were flying. Why did paired sweating humans always discard their feathers? Roberto never could, except for little fuzzy ones at his tail. But he was amazed that humans could put their feathers back on. He couldn’t. Trying to poke the quill into skin hurt. He could never understand how humans with or without the same number of appendages could pull feathers back into place.
Edgar had introduced a colorful parrot into his cage last month. Roberto didn’t observe this parrot remove her feathers as humans did. And, when it ate a cracker, he knew they were incompatible no matter how sincerely each bird gazed at the other.
While he thanked Edgar for the dishes of fresh food and water, Edgar’s friends even when wearing full feathers acted foolish, strange facial expressions, hollers, and hands full of golden liquid.
A holler ached Roberto’s ear. The human yelled, “Freedom to all.”
The human’s arm banged Roberto’s cage. “Freedom to all.”
Roberto didn’t understand the words nor did he recognize the human with no feathers or the strange click.
“Fly, fly.”
Roberto pecked at the hand inside the cage. He felt the pressure forward. The humans shouted, “Fly, fly, freedom, freedom.”
Roberto’s wings scraped against the room’s ceiling. He kept himself about the waving human hands. Back and forth. He didn’t know which way to go. He felt a breeze. Out the door he flew into the blue sky.
Soaring, he’d never viewed humans so small.
A rock loomed in front of him. On a second try his claws hooked. The perch didn’t swing.
