Buddy by Brian McGrory

Author:Brian McGrory [McGrory, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307953087
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-11-12T13:00:00+00:00

From the moment Pam lifted him from the soft blankets that covered the passenger seat of her Toyota SUV and placed him gently on the terra firma of the state of Maine for the very first time, young Buddy was a bird in distress.

It didn’t take a member of the Audubon Society or a third-generation poultry farmer to see why. His beady little eyes darted around the perimeter of my yard with a mix of fear and scorn. What he saw was a vast forest, sprawling fields, and quiet meadows dotted with wildflowers. What he didn’t see was a fence or nice neighbors who would bring him corn and imported cheese. He didn’t see one lawn flowing into another. He didn’t see simple ornamental bushes that provided safe and vital shade. No, he didn’t see any of that.

If you’re a human, which I am, the fields and forest provide a respite from the crowded concrete of the city, an opportunity to commune with nature, a tranquil massage for the mind. It is quiet but for the cackle of the occasional hawk and the nighttime howl of the distant coyote. It is remote, and it is peaceful.

For an overly domesticated bird, specifically a chicken, and especially this particularly pampered chicken, every inch and every moment of this unfamiliar setting represented a monumental threat to his increasingly self-important life. The woods where I saw nature, he saw predators. The fields where I looked for clarity as I typed on my computer keyboard, he saw as spawning grounds for beasts that would eat him alive. The clear blue skies overhead, with their regular display of nighttime stars, were the perfect habitat for flying monsters who could swoop down and carry him off in one jaw-clenching bite.

So what Buddy did, once he quickly calculated the score, was draw a deep breath into his puffed-out chest, hold it there for a moment, and then let out a crow so deep, so long, and so loud that it all but shook the needles from the ancient scrub pines that made up so much of the surrounding woods. And then he did it again and again and again, until his pointy little head seemed ready to explode off his fat neck—and so did mine. He did it until Pam finally leaned down and cheerfully said, “Poor Boo-Disk, you’re not used to it up here, are you?” Buddy clucked a soft acknowledgment to her that, no, he wasn’t used to it up here, didn’t particularly like it, and preferred to let people and creatures know about his feelings. And then he went back to warning the rest of the natural world not to mess with him.

I looked at him a little nervously, thinking, Okay, he’s going to calm down. I mean, he’s got to calm down. It’s impossible to keep screaming that loud without putting yourself into a state of total exhaustion. “You’ll be okay, Buddy,” I said, trying to sound sincere. Of course, the thought occurred to me that maybe his enemies really were lurking lustily in the woods.

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