Finch Bump

I tend to think of myself as "always" having been a teacher, and a great one, but this morning I recalled an incident from my adolescence proving that any such impression is far from true: an early attempt at teaching was ill-advised, unsuccessful, and turned brutal.

Pre-teen pk was always doing the neighbors' gardening, had a big newspaper delivery route, had a drawer full of money: and few expenses, very few vices: I'd indulge in malted milkshakes and Clark Bars at the worst. Generally the only other things that I bought were jazz records, a few of those weekly, but this memory involves an exception. I was in a pet store. One cage was active with tiny birds, "half" of which seemed to be in the air at one time changing perches. They were colorful in a pattern and of a combination of hues I wasn't familiar with: subdued grays, yellows: harlequins of subtlety. "Finches": $n.nn each, the sign said. I wanted that activity, I wanted to own it, to have it. I bought a cage and one of those finches for it, took it home, and hung it in our front enclosed porch.

The solitary finch was active I suppose; but nothing like the crowd of finches had been. Already I felt let down. But I didn't dwell on my disappointment, I had plans: I was going to train this finch. I was going to train this finch to perch on my finger. But my hand in the cage drove the finch crazy. Now the finch was hyper-active, didn't alight for more than a moment. A solution occurred to me: the finch will fear the wooden perch less than my finger: train the finch to the perch that I'm holding, then train the finch to perch closer and closer till the finch will perch on my finger.

But of course twelve or thirteen year old Paul had no experience with training anything, had no concept of time passing for individuals and populations. My finch was fleeing the perch I held just as manically as it had fled my finger in the cage. The poor bird was wearing itself out and was losing agility. I decided that we needed a break in our training. I topped up the finch's seed and water bowls and left it alone.

The next session went no better. But I had another idea. The bird might learn more to my satisfaction if the perch I held for it were longer, further away from the me he hadn't yet learned to love and trust. Sho nuff, I had a dowel in the basement. I had a dowel of a diameter the finch could grip. I got the dowel. Now we needed more room. The cage was too small. I closed the door between the porch and the living room to confine my circus to the enclosed porch and let the finch out. Immediately the finch flew as far away form me a possible and clung to a curtain at the top of a side window. No, no, train yourself to ME, I beamed my thoughts at the terrified bird. I approached the finch, holding the long perch out for it. But the dowel poking near its belly just drove the finch to the other end of the porch. This was not going at all the way I'd hoped and planned.

In a word: now I was getting tired. The bird would cling to the curtain top at the north end of the porch, but flee to the south end as soon as I re-crossed the porch near the middle. And something else was happening: the bird was beginning to poop all over the porch in its desperate flights. Paul's circus rehearsal was out of hand.

My grip on the dowel tightened. Had my face enough age to show a little character I'd start to look more like Bogart and less like Alan Ladd, more like Lillian Gish's father in Broken Blossoms and less like Lillian Gish, more like Wiley Coyote and less like Tweety Bird. I approached the center of the room. The finch saw me coming, and flew past me, high up near the ceiling.

I didn't plan it. I didn't see it coming. My action showed me that I didn't know myself at all. I swung the dowel like a saber. I slashed at my poor new pet.

Luck was against us, in the extreme. I connected. The little finch was knocked cold, clean out of the air, and lay on the carpet. I was heartbroken. What had I done? I picked it up, cradled it in my hands, blurted that I was sorry. Like a balloon the finch's finch beak inflated into a bump that seemed bigger than the finch. Did you ever see a bird with a bump on its beak? A bird that was all beak to begin with?

I put the bird back into its cage. The bird came to, and reclaimed a spot on a perch. But not for long. The finch fell to the cage floor. Before long it expired. I threw the corpse away, moved the empty cage to the basement. I'm not sure what young Paul learned that day; but old pk learned something: because just recalling the story this morning I realize: I'd forgotten completely about it! I learned that I hadn't learned to teach in one I'll-tell-you-whether-you-want-to-hear-it-or-not session.