Chapter Seven: Fiascos Without Cassidy
Chapter Seven: Fiascos Without Cassidy
It’s five a.m. and Cassidy is up for work. I don’t know how she manages, I can’t get out of bed for fear of frostbite. I roll over and hope for sleep, perhaps another two hours. There’s a sound like a siren going off in the living room— it's just the birds up and demanding attention. Cassidy’s rush out the door with no time to afford them any, leaving the problem for me. Their sounds are impossible to ignore. The cold winter is unwelcoming to my feet as I they touch the floor. The birds aren’t fooled by us hiding behind wooden doors and out of sight and reach. They demand neck scratches and shoulders to perch on. My life-force is sucked from me as I scurry to find warm clothes. Once the parrot flock is patted and given some treats, I am permitted to return to bed.
Sometime around half past eight, Brendan shouts in repetition, “Frack it's COLD!” in his Australian drawl, which he does every morning around this time. Still, I cling to my covers. The silence is again short-lived, as another bird sets off screeching. A Noisy Minor, a small dusty bird with a black and yellow mask calls relentlessly from the tree canopy right outside my window. His endless siren screeches draw me out of bed in a huff. I run outside the open saloon style front door. “Caw, Caw, Caw!” I screech right back at him. We stare each other down, me from the doorway, him from the green veil over our entry, and for some thirty-seconds there is silence. I give it some time, and remain standing there before returning to bed in dominant triumph. It is quiet for another minute, until the noisy bird sets off cawing again. He has been waiting for me to leave! This is the start of a regular feud.
On days such as this, when Cassidy is working, I must fend for myself. I bemoan the lack of table in the house as I wander with my bowl of fruit and yogurt. I afford the parrots more
attention, having passed them by once already while I ignored them calling to me personally, inquisitively and in unison.
I approach the large stand of sticks in the living room, and right away the chattering group goes silent. I select Casper, the dark grey cockatiel, the one who has a fondness for me above the others. I also try to negotiate with their leader, Tiki, offering him a finger shuttle to my other shoulder, but he shoos me away with his beak. The smaller birds have agreed to trust me already, after less than a week. Tiki remains faithful to his first love Cassidy.
Casper is pleased to be on my shoulder, and I give him his favorite head rub with my nose and chin, for he detests a finger rub. Each bird has their unique preferences for attention. As I eat on the couch, Casper sits on my chest, trying to get himself under my chin for a pat. Aww, a bird has never bonded with me like this before. Or at all.
My social gestures keep the others quiet for a while, but when the birds realize they are still not getting any attention, the loud whistling and peeping starts up again. After breakfast on days without Cassidy, I often catch up on writing, while the birds flutter off their stand just to sit on and be around me. The human roommates have left and I have the place to myself. Well, almost.
* * *
When Showering goes Horribly Wrong
I carry Casper to the bathroom with me, where I set him on the towel bar while he whistles “pop goes the weasel" to a nearby draped hand towel. I laugh in disbelief and chuckle when stretches his head to signal his desire to stand on me.
Since I am alone in the house today, I can take advantage of a rare privilege. I can enjoy a long shower and use all the water I like. Even though there is no water-use-related guilt in a long shower here— because Brisbane has an abundance of rain, there's the time factor.
In a household with five people in the house but one bathroom...lingering in the shower is rarely an option.
When someone takes a shower while someone else needs to use the toilet, there's tension in the air. The only potty option is to wait, go pee in the bushes, or trot down to the local park. During my shower, I reach for the lawn-approved natural shampoo. Since all our water is recycled, any contributions have to be all natural. Our house is inspiring— Cassidy has set up such an eco-friendly home. We have the trash sorted into three bins, we buy only organic, vegetarian food, and use natural products for all washing. Food waste is tossed literally out the window, and eaten by the chickens, whose eggs we in turn consume. I’d love to live in a house like this myself someday.
I finish my shower and towel off, and as I pass through the house, contented, on the way to my room when our cockatiel Peter suddenly shrieks for my attention. But the shrieking sound is coming from outside.
The front door is wide open, and the small gray and yellow parrot is tangled in the chicken wire fence and calling out for help. I am naked, mind you, with only a wet towel on my head. My heart pounds at the sudden dire situation, he could get scooped up by a bird of prey at any moment, and his death would be on me! I crane my neck toward my room, no clothes are out. I hurry to my suitcase, tossing things out in a panic, but finding nothing comprehensive, and I have no time to get dressed. I run back outside and look, the cockatiel is still out there. I get
some undies on at least, and then make a run for it, dashing topless to the edge of the street, desperately trying to get the bird to move onto my finger while the other hand censors my more intimate parts from view. The bird doesn’t dislodge, his talons are entangled in the chicken wire. “You've got to be kidding” I cry aloud.
I start untangling his feet, like trying to get a shoe off a kicking baby, while glancing to the right to scan for passersby. I have no idea how Australian culture feels about public nudity. At last the bird is on my finger, and I cover him with my censoring hand, to keep him from getting away or snatched at the last moment. I make a break for the house.
Luckily, I manage to save the bird and myself from public view. Whew, too much for one day.
Cassidy never has to know her bird almost died today.
* * *
Monsteria
On fair weather mornings alone, I find my niche relaxing in Dutton park. I venture out of the house, down the sloping cul de sac and to a field by the riverbank. To lie around under the morning sun, on the wool-like grass, breathing in its sweet pungency while reading Mark Twain on my kindle, is truly what heaven feels like. Not another human soul is around, I have only the company of birds again— diving swifts skim the grass like tiny black fighter jets. Some of my finest hours are spent lying in this sun-warmed grass.
Dutton park provides a lot of places to explore. I had heard there exists a rare fruit, which grows around Brisbane. It’s from a large tropical fern known as the Monstera Deliciosa, and tastes sweet and sumptuous. A “delicious monster”?
It’s a common household plant, with deep green heart-shaped leaves and natural holes that resemble Swiss cheese. The holes are the best indicator from a distance you are on the right track. At the plant’s base, Monstera ferns grow a large cone which ripens into a sweet and delicious fruit. The fruit pods are covered with green scales shaped like honey combs, and are said to taste like the cherimoya, or custard apple. However, their ripening process is slow and deemed unfit for commercial sale.
This rare fruit motivates me to hunting around Dutton park and its nearby Dutton Cemetery. I loop down through the park and mangrove swamps, finding none until I head back upland. The historical cemetery is doused in shade from enormous, rotting oak trees, whose branches reach like witches’ fingers casting a curse upon the jutting granite tombstones, lying still in rows yet jostled into dismay by earthquakes.
I meander through the dark tree cover, between the leaning tombstones that is Dutton Cemetery, reading them and wondering. For example, a female name, “Born 1870, died 1883”. She died at age thirteen, in Brisbane, Australia, in the late 1800s. What was her story? What was this city like at this time? What was it like to be thirteen in a new country in the late 1800s? In lone sorrow, I question why headstones don’t tell us more about the person they are meant to memorialize. Their lives are duly summed up in years only. What does it matter how many years they lived, if we know nothing of how they filled them? I wouldn’t think anyone desires this for themselves, yet everyone in this graveyard has the same lack of detail listed just the same.
After two hours pondering my mortality in the shady graveyard, I nearly forget why I had even come. I run down the bordering dark grassy basin, away from the graves to what could be some monstera deliciosa ferns. They line the edge of the road along a gully, just out of view of passing cars. These Monstera exist merely for the dead to admire.
I stretch my neck as best I can and stand on tiptoe, trying to spot any maturing, corn shaped fruit the Monstera ferns are renowned for. The tropical plants themselves are enormous, with Swiss-cheese like leaves the size of serving plates. They were far embedded into a dense pack of greenery, so to reach the middle of the ferns, I must dive in. I reason with myself that this is a rare opportunity, I can’t give in to any of my fears— trespassing, looking insane, or getting covered in dirt.
I pause for a second, again craning my neck for the best entry point with the least fuss. But then I go for it, I step into the plant bed and immediately start swimming through large leaves delving for fruit. There are a few pods of various sizes, but it dawns on me that I didn’t really know how to tell if they are even close to ripe. I shrug to myself and break off the biggest fruit in, dash out of the plant bed scanning for groundskeepers, and run headlong down the remaining grass hills, under a bridge, and back up toward the house. I feel like a naughty squirrel.
In the kitchen, I pull a couple scales off the pod with a knife. The fruit doesn’t look as white inside as it did on the internet. I take a bite from the topmost part and wince. Ach! It’s so bitter . . . Like biting into soap. I leave the fruit in the kitchen to ripen over the next few weeks and plan to check in on it from time to time.
Today the house is quiet and dark. As I type away on my laptop, Tikis’ whistles are mimicking the sound of my tapping fingers, hoping to lull me to him. I get up to find him on the couch, leaning his body toward my room, peeking around as if to say, “Hey, how's it going, what
you up to in there?”. He lets me take him onto my shoulder. He is so desperate for attention, he is willing to let me fling him onto his belly for a tickle. Ever since that day, he has been playful and enjoys my company.
* * *
Unpredictable Aussie Weather
Not every day in Brisbane is blessed with the sun, though. One day when Cassidy is at work, the day is marked by dreadfully chilly winter rain. Matt graciously lends me his spare bike for city errands. On one misty day, I wheel it out of the dusty underbelly of the house, dodging curious chickens as I lead the bike onto the road.
I have to buy new contact lenses, because I managed to forget to bring any. Only problem is, I only have an expired prescription to go on. I really hope they will let me buy some without hassle.
I ride for twenty minutes down Gladstone road, through Brisbane’s West End suburb, passing elegant Queenslander houses now inhabited by funky hipsters and shops.
Pedaling further, I reach the Brisbane Museum complex by the edge of the river, with a view of the main bridge leading into the central business district (CBD). But first I stop for a long pause along the river bank, admiring the unchanged panorama of the CBD’s cityscape, Museum, winding river, bridge, and long South Bank park with its gargantuan Ferris wheel. The accuracy of my memories please me as the nostalgia that washes over me in the calm windy day. Rain hasn’t broken through yet, but I can sense it will soon.
My errands are unexpectedly efficient— The CBD is a well-organized grid, and I still remember how to get around it— including an optical shop off the main street which I have visited but once before, three years ago. I walk into the store as a storm cloud bursts in thunder.
The optometrist looks over my prescription, and I expect to have to explain myself and beg him to sell me contact lenses. The only prescription I brought had expired five months before. However, he says “all good then” and rings me up with a fresh supply. I glance at the expiration date— 6/10. To an American, that means June 10th.
To the Australians, 6/10 reads as the 6th of October (the 10th month). And thus, my eyes are spared the formalities of bureaucracy by a difference in date translation.
Heavy rain greets me when I turn to leave the lens store, soaking me and the bike as we pedal toward the long bridge that leads back to South Bank. Halfway up the long bridge, I can’t pedal anymore. I get off and realize the back tire is completely flat. I call up Matt, who tells me he can pick me up in two hours. Drat. I walk the bike to a spot under the bridge where I can lock and ditch it while I explore the nearby museum complex. At least it is indoors. Luckily, there is much to see at the Brisbane Natural History Museum, it's a spectacular place full of dinosaurs, giant fossils, and interactive displays. I also have time to head upstairs to the ancient human history exhibits. I wander up to a rotating board that tells a story in pictures — a favorite tool apparently for Australian museums to deliver information without moving one's’ body.
I read in detail how the aboriginal people of this region lived— one interesting fact, there was something called the “acorn festival” every ten years or so, in which multiple native communities would make a pilgrimage to a particular grove of rarely ripening acorns, and in turn would meet other tribes which provided a peaceful grounds to exchange goods and technology. Sounds like something from a fantasy novel.
I check the time again, it is almost time to meet Matt. I explain to him I'm by the museum, and he tries to describe a nearby road in which we can meet for a pickup. Unfortunately, the road he describes is a major road, with speeding cars launching cascades of water onto the roadside where I tread slowly with my bike flat in the pouring rain.
I scan the passing cars hopelessly and walk on along the wooded roadside. Finally, a car pulls off onto the muddy banks far ahead of me. I sure hope it's Matt as I quicken my pace, trying not to fall in the mud.
A tall figure in a hood steps from the white car, and turns to face me. I sigh with relief that it is Matt, and apologize for having to be collected like this, and in the rain. “Naw it's okay, you did the right thing, you should never drive with a flat-- the wheels could have bent and permanently damage the frame,” he says while fighting the muddy bike into the trunk. Feeling less guilty, I lift my tired, muddy feet into the truck.
* * *
It is just past sunset when we arrive at the house. When we enter the house, the smell of hot Vietnamese stir-fry fills the air. We celebrate being warm, dry, and reunited with Cassidy, who is attending to the wok.
"I am so grateful to have such good friends who pick me up in the rain and make stir fry's.” I say.
Tiki greets me from Cassidy's shoulder and I run my finger along his wing. Casper sounds a loud chirp and hops onto my shoulder.
“Welcome back!” says Cassidy, “I’m making a pumpkin stir-fry with Kaffir lime!” I lean into the stir-fry for a sniff. I recognize the pumpkin as a butternut squash.
Matt says, “Yeah, we don’t have the orange pumpkins in Australia, we have other varieties, but we call your squash a pumpkin. We also have something we call a gem Squash, which I don’t think exists in the U.S.”
I grumble at the never-ending confusion of Australian dialect. Everything seems the same at first glance, but then everything is slightly different.
Cassidy sets aside a small plate of pumpkin seeds, which never make it to the frying pan. Tiki and Casper make little trips from our shoulders to the plate, nibbling a few here and there until none remain.
Before Cassidy gets a bite of dinner into her mouth, her phone rings.
“Hello? Oh! How many? I see. Yes, we can come tomorrow. Thanks!”
“Who was that?’ I ask through mouthfuls.
“A guy from the Noosa RSPCA office, who got a call from a local lifeguard, that there has been a storm up in Noosa, and heaps of migrating shorebirds are dead along the coast. Tragic for the birds, but it is lucky for us— these storms usually happen out at sea, too far from the coast to be studied by researchers. This is a huge opportunity! It was so nice of them to call . . .I reckon we can meet the lifeguard tomorrow. He has already started picking up specimens. I need to call him and set up a time to meet!”
She dashes off to her bedroom and shuts the door, leaving her abandoned meal on the coffee table, getting cold.
I’m excited to visit Noosa, I recall it’s a lovely resort beach town, with windblown beach bluffs.
“He says he’s got a whole trunk full, about thirty specimens.” Says Cassidy upon her return. Why any man, even a lifeguard, would collect a trunkful of dead birds without knowing who might want them, I don't understand. But it is most appreciated and helpful to our cause, so who am I to question it? “There is one catch though” informs Cassidy. “He can only meet us later in the arvo (Aussie for “afternoon”). We can drive up early anyway, walk the shore for birds ourselves until he can meet us.”
“I’m game!” I say. I’m always eager for some beach time, of any nature.