I have always wondered why humans name their pets with human names. Mine named the cat Gloria, the dog Doug, and me, the bird, Samson. Yeah. Pretty silly, I know. A tiny guy like me named Samson.
The cat and dog don’t mind their names at all. I have to stifle a laugh, and a sarcastic comeback every time that bean dip calls me. “How are you this morning, Samson?”
“For a spy, stuck in a cage made out of cheap aluminum wire that puts up with eating old seeds all day, I’m doing well.” That’s what I want to answer. But, the human would freak out. See. They think they’re the only highly intelligent life on the planet.
As a spy, my job was to observe the behavior of a human in its natural habitat. Which probably makes no sense, given the humans don’t live in natural habitats. No, they make their own habitats. More like super giant ant colonies than natural habitats. At least ants are small. Humans? They’re like the dinosaurs. Big, and clumsy, and they take tons of power to run themselves.
The only birds left on the planet were like me. Spies. We spent a lot of time learning to hide from the humans, so they wouldn’t know we were here. We spy on them, study their behavior, and try to partially limit the damage they do to the planet. We expect to fail, but we’ve collected tons of DNA, plant seeds, insect, animal, amphibian, reptile, and fish eggs. We’ve got an emergency cache ready, in case the humans kill off everything.
Of course, we won’t rescue the humans, any more than we did the dinosaurs, and dozens of others.
I reported to the mothership every month. A brief report made using a low power ultra wide band transmitter that’s implanted in my right wing. Flip a switch, and all the data for the month goes out in a couple of heartbeats, and the transmitter shuts down.
Of course, I do get bored. It’s tough being a spy, and pretending to be trapped in a cage, held at the mercy of a human. Think about that. Stuck standing there, holding onto a wooden dowel, pretending to sleep all day, and hopping about the cage, acting excited every time the human comes home.
I much prefer the times the human is at work, or out shopping, or running around. I open up this little cage it thinks I’m safe within, and I stretch my wings a bit, and visit with the cat, and the dog. The cat purrs a lot, and meows. She likes it when I hop on her back, and use my little talons to scratch her in all the itchy spots.
The dog runs to the human’s piano, and barks until I fly over, and play a tune of some kind. A simple tune the dog can wag his tail to. He wags, and wags, and then plunks down, and smiles, and for him, everything is OK with the world.
I check the internet on the humans computer. Like too many humans, they don’t password protect it, or secure it. “It’s in my home. No one uses it but me. I’m good.”
I always check the local news, to add that to my reports. I also erase all traces of what I used it for. The human doesn’t know. Of course, I never shit on the computer. That would leave evidence. I always pretend to shit wherever and whenever I want when I’m in the cage, or when the human has me out. But when I’m working, no. I wait until I get back to the cage.
The piano is a good instrument. We birds like it. We’ve stolen the human plans for making them, and have produced pianos of our own. There are several at the base inside the moon. Someday, when my time as a spy is done, I hope to be able to go home, after a debriefing on the base. But, realistically, I know I may not live long enough to go home.
Earth is a dangerous place, what with all the humans on it. A being a spy? That’s almost always a death sentence. But, hope always survives, so I kept hoping.
Well. I have to behave like a proper pet bird now. The human just parked its car in the driveway.
Stupid humans. You watch. They’ll kill everything. You just wait. They will. I guarantee it.
749 words
@mysoulstears
Saw the picture for week 85 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge and an entire new universe opened up in my mind. This is the result. You can read about Miranda’s small fiction challenge here. Please, go read Miranda’s short tale this week, and any others that showed up. The tales are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed. And many of them are amazing.
Later, I heard two trucks. I spotted them outside the window. They stopped in the field behind the cabin. Two dogs leaped out of the truck beds, and a man in a scarf approached the cabin. “You called?” he asked.
My Soul's Tears 