The Search for Christmas

‘Christmas! Christmas! That’s all I hear about these days,’ grumbled the Basset, treading on his ear. ‘Whatever it is, if it’s more than two feet tall, I can’t do anything about it. It will have to find its own way around.’

‘I hope it bounces!’ sang the Pomeranian, demonstrating vigorously, but no one listened to him because he was still very young and rather brainless.

‘I’m going to the beauty parlour to get ready for it,’ said the Poodle smugly, ‘so it must be someone important.’

‘What’s a beauty parlour? asked the Pom.

‘Oh, clipping and combing, pulling and powdering – all that jazz,’ replied the Poodle. ‘You’ll find out when you’re older. Right now I’d better make the best of the time that’s left,’ and she trotted off, giving a naughty laugh, in French.

‘You ought to know what Christmas is,’ said the Basset to the Great Dane.

‘Why should I know?’ asked the Great Dane.

‘You just look as if you ought to know,’ said the Basset irritably, treading on his other ear.

‘You’re treading on your ear,’ remarked the Pom.

‘Oh, am I?’ said the Basset. ‘I do beg your pardon. Do you know what Christmas is?’ he asked the Dachshund.

‘Mmm-m-m!’ said the Dachshund, and sat down for a long, long think.

‘Maybe it’s a new chair,’ muttered the Basset. ‘I’ve heard them talking about Christmas chair...’

‘Poof!’ interrupted the Alsatian. Everyone sat up attentively for, as you know, Alsatians are often in touch with the Police and may have access to secret information.

‘We’d better all go home,’ he advised, ‘and try to find out more about it. ‘We’ll meet again tomorrow, same time, same place.’

The Basset put his nose down and went through his house like a vacuum cleaner, looking for Christmas. The Poodle went to the beauty parlour and did her best to listen through the cotton wool in her ears. The Great Dane found a tree in his house and was told to go outside and find a tree of his own. The Pom had such a wonderful time wrecking decorations she forgot what she was looking for. The Alsatian took secret notes in short-paw and the Dachshund had a long, long look.

When the friends met again at their favourite place in the park, between the signs Keep off the grass and No dogs allowed, they all had the same thing to report. Christmas was something about giving.

‘Everyone gives someone something,’ summarised the Alsatian, consulting his notes, which he had written on his tummy for safekeeping.

‘Thought as much,’ said the Basset gloomily. ‘What have we to give anyone?’

They all thought the same thought. Bones! Lovely smelly buried treasure bones!

‘No good,’ said the Basset, treading on both ears at once. ‘Tried giving them bones years ago. Didn’t appreciate it.’

‘Well,’ said the Poodle, ‘there’s that dog behind the garage. She hasn’t got anything.’

‘She has too,’ piped the Pom. ‘She’s got puppies in the storm drain.’

‘That’s not very good,’ frowned  the Great Dane, ‘It’s going to rain.’

By the time they found the dog behind the garage, it was raining hard.

‘Hey!’ they called to her. ‘Do you want some bones?’

Not much more than bones herself, the mother dog was hauling the last of her four puppies out of the flooded storm drain. They all rushed to help her but, frightened, she snarled at them.

‘All right, all right!’ soothed the Alsatian. ‘I’m the Police, come to render assistance.’

They gathered up the shivering puppies and all took shelter under the Great Dane – all except the Dachshund who was mostly out in the rain. He gave a long, long sigh. ‘What do we do now?’

‘In my house,’ said the Alsatian, who was a trained observer, ‘there’s a red coat thing with white wool around the edges.’

‘So-o-o?’ yawned the Great Dane wetly.

‘It’s got a cap thing with a wool beard on it that would make a nice nest for the puppies.’

‘Not much good to us here if it’s over there,’ drooled the Basset sadly; but the Great Dane was frowning heavily at the Poodle.

‘Weren’t your ancestors smugglers’ dogs,’ asked the Great Dane. ‘Small boats slipping into coves, laden with contraband...’

‘Well, yes,’ admitted the Poodle uncomfortably, ‘but I don’t think girls ever...’

‘Of course they did,’ said the Great Dane briskly. ‘You run along and smuggle the cap thing.’

‘But I’ll be seen,’ wailed the Poodle, lifting a forepaw rather pathetically.

‘We’ll have to create a diversion,’ decided the Alsatian. ‘We’ll go to the front of the house and bark in our biggest voices.’

‘What about me?’ interrupted the Pom. ‘I haven’t got any biggest voices!’

‘You just stand there and look beautiful,’ advised the Alsatian, ‘while you,’ he indicated the Poodle, ‘nip in through the back and smuggle it.’

He looked thoughtfully at the Dachshund. ‘You’d better stay here,’ he decided, ‘and keep the family surrounded. Come on, men. This way! Let’s go!’

Outside the Alsatian’s house they took up strategic positions. The Alsatian waved his tail three times.

‘Boof!’ boomed the Great Dane.

‘Voetsak!’ shouted the Alsatian.

‘Wooof! Wooof!’ bayed the Basset.

‘Weef, weef!’ yelled the Pom, while out from the back of the house ran the Poodle, high-stepping though the mud, the crimson hood with its white beard trailing behind.

‘It belongs to someone,’ she said worriedly, when once more they were gathered around the mother dog and her shivering puppies. ‘It belongs to Sandy Claws or someone.’

‘Never mind,’ said the Alsatian smoothly. ‘We’re going to give it back. Now put the pups in and I’ll take one side and you,’ he said to the Great Dane, ‘take the other...’ The rest of his instructions became muffled as he and the Great Dane lifted the hood and moved awkwardly towards the houses, the puppies cradled and swinging between them and the mother trotting anxiously beneath. They dumped their burden on the very first doorstep.

‘Look what we’ve got for Christmas!’ squealed the children in delight. ‘Oh thank you, Mum! Thank you, Dad!’ and they hugged their astonished parents and the puppies all at once.

‘It worked!’ sang all the dogs together. ‘Christmas worked!’

But the little mother dog crept sadly away. She was thin and dirty and she had ugly, hairless scars where people had thrown burning sticks at her to chase her away. No one would want her.

‘Hey, wait! Come back! It’s Christmas!’ cried the other dogs, racing after her.

‘I’ll look after you,’ declared the Alsatian.

‘I’ll shelter you,’ rumbled the Great Dane.

‘I’ll take you to the beauty parlour,’ promised the Poodle.

‘I’ll talk to you,’ offered the Pom, and the Dachshund gave her a long, long wink.

Then all the children from all the houses, attracted by the noise, ran out calling, ‘There she is! There’s the mother! The puppies need their mother!’

‘I want her! I want her!’ they all cried at once. ‘Oh, isn’t she thin? Isn’t she sweet?’ And soon the mother dog was giving her puppies their first lesson in eating from a dish.

The rain stopped and the sun went down. The Christmas beetles tuned their fiddles and their bagpipes and the great Dog Star shone down with a smile so bright it seemed almost close to tears.

*******

Printed in Mutare SPCA News, 1972.

Return of the robin!

We've neglected this blog for far too long - but like the robin, it's back. Jill Wylie wrote dozens of short pieces for the papers, SPCA reports, and herself - charming, humorous, redolent of her mantras: Be attentive to life; praise life; save every possible life. Here are two encounters with birds:

RETURN OF THE ROBIN

He’s back! His rich repertoire of impersonations includes some numbers I haven’t heard before and I just wish I knew the composers.

So where’s he been all this time? He starts with an impressive rendering of the Fish Eagle’s famous call, so I take it he basked away the winter months on Lake Chikamba’s balmy shores, around the mountain in Mozambique.

His “Crowned Eagle” is pretty good, too. He even gets the variations of tone as the eagle somersaults in display. At the sound of this the dogs used to rush out to protect the bantams and scan the skies, until they learned to detect the subtle differences from the real thing.

Much the same happened when he first imitated the lazy whistle of the builder across the way – an amazingly low note for such a small bird. The dogs hurtled out yelling about trespassers being bitten, chewed up and prosecuted, only to slink home, embarrassed to the roots.

We, too, have to watch for these subtle differences. Being involved in the bird atlassing project it’s important not to think you’re listening to the composer himself, live on air, and mark him on your card, when in fact it’s a plagiarised version by NR.*

It helps to know a bit about the local birds. I mean, when you hear a Fiery-necked Nightjar good-lord-delivering-you at midday in sweltering October you might not be fooled. But if you didn’t realise that the Black-crowned Tchagra, a favourite with the robin, would be calling from the woodland rather than from the deep forest where you’ve been hearing him, you could easily add him to your list by mistake.

Others are not so obvious. His “Starred Robin” effort, for instance – from the LP which includes such well-known hits as Heuglin’s, Cape and Whitebrowed, as well as medleys and variations of many other songs – comes from the right place at the right time with the right pitch, tone and uneven rhythm. And how does one robin manage to sound like a whole flock of Bee-eaters?

I once watched several Natal Robins having a ding-dong in this forest. Some macho-dominance thing and not, as I first thought, united action against an enemy. For half an hour they threw at each other every birdsong in the book, cursed Crowned Eagles down upon each other’s head, cuckoos in their nests, shrikes and hawks upon their children and their children’s children. The result was like several radios on at once, each tuned to a different station.

I could have stopped it quite easily, I’m sure, by reaching out my hands and catching some of them. They paid me no attention at all, so busy were they working out new abuses.

Later I found a nest in that area, perched insecurely up where the roots of a strangler-fig fingered over rocks, in easy reach of my wild cats, servals, civets, genets, cuckoos and shrikes. In fact, I first noticed it when it was being raided by a boomslang. And there was a nest on the ground under a fern root near the rubbish pit, soon cleaned out, as I anticipated, by a giant rat. There are other nests around, many in ridiculous places. It seems that, in general, the Natal Robins lack a comprehensive home-planning policy, an area of concern that should be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Why do you suppose this robin imitates birds the way he does and makes such a thing of it, such an art? If it really is a smart idea why aren’t all the others onto it? Is there something different about his vocal apparatus that they can’t match? When he’s onto his own personalised see-saw song you can understand it’s the old routine: I’m me! This is my place! All other NRs take note!

Does he then go on to declare, “and that goes for you, too, Crowned Eagle! And Bulbul, and Nightjar, and Emerald Cuckoo, and Starred Robin and Heuglin’s and shrike! And you, too, builder-across-the-way ...You all keep out of my space, you hear!”

If so, there’s inflated ego for you.

On the other hand, I suppose he could just be having a load of fun and taken out a copyright on the game.

***

* Natal Robin. This was written before the Grand Names Change a few years ago. Now known as the Red-capped Robin-Chat, despite the fact that its cap isn't red at all, but a sort of rusty brown-grey. What were 'they' thinking?

******************

FLY, BABY, FLY!

This morning a tiny bronze mannikin, racing the dawn wind with his fellows, hit the window – bup! I ran to reach him before the cats, who know that sound as well as I do and are snatch-quick off the mark, while around him the excited twittering of his flock turned to shrill cries of dismay.

As he lay in my hand, eyes closed, head lolling, I could feel a million pulses still flying him full-tilt down the wind, and the stunned, incredulous gasps of the cells of his body panicking for instructions from a brain gone blank; then rushing to emergency stations, throwing switches, shutting down systems, stopping traffic. Swift, precise procedure as laid down for Dealing with Shock.

Or was it to be Dealing With Death? How can you tell from the outside?  Would those cells decide to give up the ghost, fold down upon themselves like hands prepared for burial, and leave, bowed and cowled, on the long lonely journey back to the soil – perhaps to become, in time, grass and seeds for other little mannikins?

Quick! Turn him right way up and keep him warm. Warmth means life. Fool them into thinking Plan A still holds! Put him in the dark warm recovery box kept ever ready for just this situation.

Dark. Pretend it’s night. Pulses, stop flying; slow down for sleep. Quiet, now. Total quiet. Wait an hour or so. Pray. I read somewhere You count every sparrow as it falls. Well, Lord, please count this one as it rises. Just this once. Won’t cost you a thing, honest. Wait on, until time to try ...

Softly, softly, I felt him in the dark. Warm. Supple. Pulses ticking over quietly. Cells holding steady. Feather whispering to feather: Hey, are you awake? Where are we? Should we go now?

I carried the box out to the garden, well away from cats and walls and windows, and eased the cover back. Daylight! He stared at me: Hell, what’s that? Doesn’t move so forget it for the moment. Cautiously he checked himself out – balance; batteries; fuel; oil in the joints; toes flex, unflex; right wing, left wing – cocked his head, took his bearings from the sun, and .... OK, let’s go! Let’s try! Loop, swoop, and away! Sun in the eyes! Sun on the wings! Fly, baby, fly!

Come on, you miserable old day, do your worst. Fetch me every stinking problem you can cook up and still I’ll spend you smiling. For I hear my little bird laughing with the morning. I even thought I heard him call, Thanks! as he reached again for the wind.

*****