Most of you might already know how my daughter is crazy about animals and birds. She has been asking me to get her a pigeon for ages. To know more about our first conversation, visit my post: Negotiating with Intelligent Beings. She has been at it ever since. Every couple of days, she reminds my husband and I how much happier she would be if she could get a pigeon.
We have been fighting the never ending waves of emotional torture using various means.
At times, we try to make her see how our house is like a bird sanctuary where so many birds visit us every day–pigeons, doves, crows, babblers, parrots, hornbills, owls, eagles, hawks, and so on. When she said she wanted birds that would meet her every day, my husband bought a couple of clay parrots in a cage.
She played with it for a couple of days and the cage broke. She was afterme to build a nest for them and get eggs but that plan never came through for the lack of grass needed to create the nest.
And then, I got her a set of unbreakable plastic birds. She played with them for a week and now they sit in a box awaiting their owner’s return.
Lately, she started her barrage of requests for a pigeon again. We had to decline point blank, reminding her that the bird would probably hate her for caging her and die an early death too. That was when she relented and, with a sadness of Romeo upon the death of Juliet, she said that she’d would not cage a bird.
I guess God smiled that day because what we saw next was divine intervention. A pigeon started visiting us.
We are not sure if it is the same pigeon, but it certainly looks the same and chooses the same branch to sit–right in front of our window–on the same time every day. So, as soon as my daugher has her bath, we open the window to let sunlight in and there it sits waiting for her. Then my daughter takes some time socializing with it.
When the visits became a habit and a daily expectation, my daughter finally named it as Rapunzel. Honestly, I always thought Rapunzel is supposed to have hair long enough to reach down a few floors. He seems more like the prince visiting my daughter (who is Rapunzel, living on top of the tallest tower). But since my daughter is the Disney Princess expert here and the owner-apparent of this wayward pigeon, she gets to decide the name.
At least, she is happy now. Thank God!
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 