Love birds and murderous captivity

The so-called lovebirds perch on a tree branch, all the time smooching each other. They look beautiful and their love making makes them all the more fascinating. I take out my phone to click pictures. They shy. I miss the smooching shots.

“Don’t go by their looks, they are cruel to other birds beyond your imagination,” said the cook of the family I was visiting. He took care of the birds in Grandmama’s Gardedn, a balcony covered with wire mashing to protect the birds. The mashing had a few visible holes, plugged with paper and cloth. The cook told me the birds keep working on finding slits and loose joints to work on and fly away. One bird had escaped by working on a loose point in the welding joint, before they could see it. Now they have fixed it. The balcony has a tree branch, where different kinds of birds perch and live their lives the way humans live their lives in homes and offices—with love, hate, likes, dislikes, intrigues and schemes. We must have learnt it all from the animal world. Or, perhaps, we have evolved from there. We have all those traces in us.

The balcony had something surreal about it, I was enchanted by the colours of the birds and their incessant chirp. Somehow, watching them through the glass panes became part of my routine as long as I stayed with the family.  

 The birds had almost eaten up the entire birch of the tree. They had nothing else to do through days and nights except dig at the birch with their beaks. They had no routine for flying. The birds had terrorised almost half a dozen lal muniya birds(they are tiny colourful birds, don’t know what are they called in English), and had eaten up a few , actually strangulated them to death. Birds can be so violent in captivity. Not that they are saintly in freedom. Survival of the fittest, we were told in biology class. But we have a need to imagine a beautiful world, where we imagine the ills of the human world do not exist. So have bird houses, we have aquariums and zoos.

                                                           

The family has fortified the balcony to protect the birds from predators. This has turned the birds into predators of sorts. There is a quail couple, they cannot fly, so they are on the ground all the time. The parrots come down and tease the quails, they ride the quite quail couple. The quails laid about 25 eggs but none could be hatched, the other flying birds won’t let them. The quail are in distress. The lovebirds also ride the back of quail. This is their joyride in prison. Riding the back of the weaker.  

I watch the National Geographics with fascination. The intrigues of the family soaps and the planned strategized violence of humans fade before the raw ferocity of animal world. NG showed a fascinating film on pythons. The mating dance of the python couple is one of the best choreographed dances i have ever seen. Then, there was this villain python, who had failed in wooing the lady python. One fine day he finds her alone. This villain tries to woo her, the lady python cold shoulders him. She is not interested, moreover she is pregnant. What this male python does to the female, angered by rejection, pales the violence of rape cases we have read about in newspapers. And we are told there are no rapes in the animal world. The story doesn’t end here. When the male partner returns and finds his lady ripped apart by the failed rival, he gives the violator the same treatment. And we build corrupt systems to deliver justice!