How My Finch Stole Christmas

The Insider
Rockingham Gazette
January 14, 1985

Over the holidays, I became a father, of sorts. At 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, I took delivery of two finches, one chocolate colored, one pied cinnamon. Total weight: 26 grams. I felt like handing out teeny-weeny cigars.

Adopting a pet wasn’t something I took on lightly; I considered the pressures of becoming a single father living in the city. I knew I’d have to change my ways. Finches need fresh water daily. They eat a strict diet. They can’t stand cold drafts, late hours, or loud noises. They demand a comfortable routine and a tidy cage. 

I didn’t know if I was up to all that discipline. Those of you who have chosen to raise human babies may sneer, but finches are a big responsibility. For months, I stopped by the Pet Emporium just to stare at the products on the shelf: finch diet, finch candy, finch toys, finch vitamins. There’s nesting food, moulting food, beak conditioner, perch powder. 

Finches have their own medicine for constipation, diarrhea, iron-poor blood, and indigestion. There are finch uppers and finch downers. I chose finches because the bird books say they’re the easiest to care for.

It was only a matter of time before my biological clock went cuckoo. You see, when a man reaches the age of 30, something begins pecking at his soul. Call it the nesting instinct. One day you’re sowing wild oats, the next you’re sprinkling birdseed.

En route to the post office, I found myself staring in the window of D.L.Browne on Daniel Street. They have a wooden cageful of finches in that flower shop. It’s covered in greens and tied with a red bow. I’d press my face to the glass like an expectant dad. One day, there were babies, not much bigger than the eraser on the tip of a pencil. I tapped and waved and made birdie noises and forgot to mail my letter.

I was paying more and more attention to the pets of Portsmouth and to their owners. Jerry, for example, has Otis, a jet black junkyard dog who once ran wild in Seacrest Village. Clare has Sneakers, a droopy bassett named, probably, for the atmosphere he brings into a room. Kari has a sleek-looking gray dog. Kathy has Wojo the cat. Carol has parakeets. I needed something to call my own.

It’s a big leap. I haven’t had a pet since I was 13. Before that age, kids keep a menagerie of living things in cups and bottles and boxes with holes poked in the top, but those are specimens, not companions. I had fireflies and June bugs, white mice and garter snakes, gerbils and turtles. Those are the pets you gotta have one day. A week later, your mother finds them dried up under the couch. I got a chameleon on a stick at the circus. It only changed color once, then croaked on the way home. I learned a lot about burying animals from those early pets, but not much about parenting. 

Thirteen was when I got rheumatic fever. I had to spend a whole year caged in my bedroom, trapped on my bed. When I finally got let out, my parents drove to the animal shelter where I adopted a fat 8-year-old beagle that wouldn’t hunt, named Betsy. I loved that dog like a boy loves a dog, and when Betsy died, I knew I would never love again.

Then came Ruffy, a wild black and white mutt. Ruffy died too. A local police officer shot him for chasing deer. When my mother replaced Ruffy with a French poodle, I moved out of the house and went to college. I tried keeping a cat in a dorm. It was a good way to meet girls. Fritz slept on my shoulders while I studied and even learned to hitchhike with me. I was a bad dad back then–irresponsible and neglectful. Fritz got pregnant one day when my back was turned, so during spring break, I dropped her off with my parents. Fritz had a family of her own. 

But despite our best efforts, maturity comes to us all one day. I got a cage just like the one in the window of D.L. Browne, complete with greenery and a red bow. In it today sit two tiny birds, Lee-and-Arlo da Finchy. I’m a Pet Emporium parent these days, stocking up on millet spray, egg biscuits, and finch fruit cocktail. Lee and Arlo like carrots and chicory. I’m looking for a good grub supplier. Before they eat, finches take a mouthful of bird gravel, a mixture of charcoal and crushed oyster shells, to aid their digestion. Birds don’t have teeth. A month ago I couldn’t have told you that.

People with human babies tell me how their kids add a new dimension to their lives. I’m sure they do, I say. But you have to give up going to the movies to get it. Finches don’t need babysitters. All they do is take baths and groom each other, and flick seed husks halfway across the room. They don’t even sit on your finger. They barely chirp. Arlo likes to hop around on my writing desk during his exercise hour. The other day, he left behind a feather no bigger than a fingernail. 

“You may have a plucker on your hands,” Joyce Wheeler told me. She works at the pet shop and has a hundred birds of her own at home in Eliot.

What’s a plucker?” I asked nervously. 

Joyce said Arlo may have “issues.” Could be medical or behavioural, she said. Could be environmental. 

I followed her recommendations, and thank you, Lord, the plucking has subsided. But it was a rough couple of days. I was so absorbed in the crisis, I forgot to worry about my taxes and my insurance payment, my phone bill, and even my newspaper column. Nothing in life, for the moment, weighed more than a feather.

Copyright 1985 J.Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.