“What do we feed it?” The small bird sat on Ross’ shoulder. Unfazed and comfortable as Ross walked about the flat.

“Do you still have porridge?”

“Will it like that?”

“Yeah. It’s just shaven oats.”

I did have porridge. I sprinkled some out of the packet onto my palm and place it onto Ross’ shoulder. The bird looked at it. Nothing more.

“Ok. Maybe not”.

“What about honey and net cornflakes?”. We were still in the cereal cupboard. “Just don’t feed him rice. It will make it explode.”

We didn’t have much of a clue. The small creature had flown into the glass door of our terrace about an hour ago. Squarked. And then wandered into the living room. I’ve had a number of couchsurfers into my house before. Weekend travellers, hitchhikers, round the world cyclists. Requests from nomadic strangers at short notice. But nothing quite so unannounced.

We tried to feed it other things. Ground up cereal bar. Small pieces of apply. It nibbled a little bit on the apply. I don’t know if this was sufficient. I had no idea of what the acceptable appetite is of an animal only 3 inches in height.

It had already caused some drama. One of Ross’ friends was around to share pizza and beers. She had worked in the legal world before becoming a personal trainer. A no nonsense combination. She had already chastised and given expletives to half the food I’d brought back from the supermarket. Tinned soup? “All the sugar. No!”. And while said beer, she was having none of it.Think of the calories. “I don’t want to get fat”. She only drank vodka and tonic water. And she assured me that she could make me cry if she was my trainer.

Yet she hated animals. Feared many of them. She wanted us to chuck the little guest back out into the night. While the bird stayed on Ross’ shoulder, she backed away to the far end of the other sofa. But the fear was irrelevant to the bird. It was playful. Incredibly domesticated. It flew other to her. She shrieked, panicked to her feet, yet still it landed on the back of her shoulder as she turned away. “Get the fucking thing off me”, There’s no point trying to hide from your fears. They fly at your all the same.

It became clear the bird would be staying the night. Social media posts gave offers of a new home. But our crowdsourced cry to help find the owner yielded nothing. I was a little bit saddened by this. My spanish friends told me it was an inseperable. In English, a lovebird, but I like the Spanish name better. Small parrots, affectionate and social. They’re said to grieve hard if they lose their mate.

Ross’ friend, Upstaged by all of this, soon left. She had animal free zones to go to.

I walked out onto the terrace. I was in Spain, but close to the Gibraltar frontier. There was a clear view to the rock of Gibraltar. It’s north face of sheer limestone rising abruptly 400m from the low lying land before it. The wind was blowing through strongly from its southernly direction. Maybe the little bird had carried the wind in a flight dash across the border. And Morocco lies just a further 10 miles south behind it, across the straight of Gibraltar. A colleague of mine swam this distance once. I’ve crossed it in a more leisurely fashion in a passenger ferry. Maybe the bird was capable of flying this.

It really wasn’t. This was a bird that simply wanted to fly from one shoulder to another, and perhaps up to the top of the book shelf and back. It had no desire for long distances. We’d taken it back out on the terrace a couple of times. To see if it had the appetite to fly away. But it just flapped back into the safety of the living room. One of my friends who owns some birds, and whose greater experience I must bow down to, told me that it would probably die if we set it free. So where it had come from remained a mystery.

—————–

Ross went out for drinks and I was left holding the birdy. As I watched some TV it rested on my knee, pruning it’s feathers. It stayed with me when I walked around the flat, which made going to the toilet an inconvenient experience. It squarked when things were getting too restless. Painfully so in my ear. The uncertainty of life? It seemed more content, and certainly quieter, when I remained stiller, on the sofa. Hoping around the cushions, waddling across my laptop keys, nestling on my jeans. Jumping on to the rim of my glass of water and dipping it’s beak into it. Would it have done the same if I’d had a glass of whisky? Maybe. But a drunk bird would have only added to my troubles.

It was a nightmare to deal with when I wanted to sleep. A cardboard beer box inside a bigger cardboard box from a microwave was all we could manage for a cage. But then it was the issue of getting it inside it. It like to be on my shoulder. Or perhaps peached on a high shelve above the box. I didn’t want to leave that. With the lights off it might have panicked and flown into a wall. Possibly. I don’t know these things. I added a little bowl of water and some apple chunks to the cardboard box. Yet it still seemed to take another 10 minutes before the bird was persuaded to step into it’s recycled home for the night.

I hesitated at the door before I walked away. Was it trying to clamber out of the box in the dark. Would it fall and hurt its self. But all was quiet. I hoped for the best and went to my own bedroom.

—————–

It left the next day. A friend of us with slightly more of a clue, and importantly a cage, took it into their home. I took a short walk to the corner shop soon after. Noticing the larger wild birds in the palm trees I passed more than I normally would. I brought some bread and a Spanish language newspaper I’m still learning to comprehend, and walked back in the sun, ripping chunks off the warm bread as I went. I used to do this as a kid in family holidays in Spain. I haven’t learnt much in the way of extra patience since. If this is any way relevant to the story, it’s because the our house guest promoted some nostalgia from within. And all the same, it’s how I start my weekends when I’m staying in the neighbourhood.

Checking Facebook shows me that post with a photo of the bird has gained more likes then my photo album of Antarctica. People will ask me about it in the same way. “What was it like in Antarctica?” or “What happened that time a bird flew into your house?”. A question requiring a story. You don’t have to go to the bottom of the Earth for something interesting and unexpected. Just keep an eye out on what passes your window.