An Ode to the Caged Fellows
My grandfather kept a yellow bird named “Coco” for years. Its white cage sat next to the rocking chair my grandmother used to sing us to sleep on. Both the cage and the chair were kept in the dining area along with an old grandfather clock that tick-tocked away for more years than I have memories. The old clock’s ticking, the creaking of the rocking chair, and the chirping of that yellow bird Coco are the sound track to most of my childhood days spent with my French Canadian grandparents.
Sometimes, my grandfather would get excited and let his bird out. Coco would fly around the kitchen. Perch himself on the highest ledges above the counter tops. And sometimes shit right into my grandmother’s famous vegetable soup simmering below on the stove top.
Once during a typically cold northern Quebec winter, the bird escaped through the front door when my aunt came by for a visit. We watched, wide-eyed, as the yellow bird chirped its way past my aunt and flew into the white world yonder. All of us were too slow to react and before we could process what had even happened my aunt had already shut the door on poor Coco.
I looked at my grandpa for a reaction, commentary, anything to make sense of this event. “Maudit,” he whispered through his dentures. “Shit.” That wasn’t enough to tell me if this was a good thing? A bad thing? A whatever thing? Coco left? Should we be freaking out? There was an eerie calm in the room.
I would only learn the answer to my doubts later that year during one of our traditional summer visits. There, in the white cage, was Coco perched on its little wooden swing. Except now he was blue. My grandfather told me the bird had changed colour due to the extreme cold it had weathered over the winter holidays.
I was relieved. Deep down too I think I always knew Coco would come back.
A few summers after that, though, the bird was suddenly gone. For good. No one had warned me before my visit. I arrived one day to find the cage covered in the blanket typically used to shelter Coco at night, as if birds too needed to be tucked in. Except this time when I pulled the blanket back there was no blue, or yellow, or Coco. My grandfather explained that birds are the world’s greatest migratory creatures. It was in their blood to travel long and far. And so, his yellow-then-blue bird had simply gone to do what it was meant to.
I pictured Coco, a little tropical blue bird, soaring across the great Canadian plains in classic v-formation with our native geese. I felt happy for him.
Following the news of Coco’s liberating cross-Canada journey, over the years, I began to associate the very notion of freedom with birds in flight. The connection was solidified further after watching various Nat Geo shows about the Arctic Tern, a truly great seabird. It has the longest migration in the animal kingdom, a simple route that can take them from the UK to Australia in a matter of months. Their voyage across the world is my vision of freedom incarnate.
To this day, this symbology holds richly in my mind. So powerfully so that every time I walk past a caged bird a part of me dies. I see those little fellows and think they must rank so depressingly low on a happiness scale. They must, in their cages, embody the sorrow of all the prisoners and all the handicaps in the world combined. I cringe to think that their industry is denied for the trade of their song and beauty.
I also think back to my days in the canyons of southern Peru spent admiring the great Condor. It is the world’s largest flying bird in the Western Hemisphere. I remember watching their big black bodies jump from cliffs and dive head first deep into the gorges only to be shot right up, high up, by pockets of hot air blasting them from the valley’s depths. They would hover over these air pockets, looking for prey miles below. Once a meal was spotted, they would dive again, as if plummeting rockets, back out of sight.
Weightlessness. Terminal Velocity. These are physical states this bird needs to survive.
I often look at caged birds — grounded, static — and think, what if: what if I just slipped and my hand grazed the handle and it flew open and the bird flew out and it went on a great cross-Canadian journey to weightlessness and terminal velocity and freedom?
But then I think of my grandpa, and Coco. My grandpa used to always tell me — before Coco left on his great migration — that caged birds were different from wild ones. They were happier being inside. Because they were bred for metal bars and mini swings. And they sang to us every day. And they responded when we talked to them. They grew to love us, just as we grew to love them. And their hearts would break if we broke this truce.
And yet, someone had to take the wild and make it tame.
