A Tale of Two Birds "The horror!  The horror!" ~Joseph Conrad    

With incessant twittering, one would never suspect
that a tiny Zebra Finch could contain so much evil.
Yet, cute and harmless looking by day,
such tiny creatures can turn into
evil monstrosities by night.
Unsuspecting, I took these 'things' home with me.
Caring for them while their true master was away,
I watched after them,
feeding and cleaning the disgusting mess
that they left behind.
 

 

And then one night....
I learned the meaning of true horror.
From the depths of their cage,
the twittering and tweet-tweeting stopped.
Wondering what the hell was wrong,
I walked to their cage.
And saw it...
 

One of our cats was perched by the cage.
Licking his lips,
I could tell what was on his mind.
And then something completely wrong
with the scene caught my eye.
In fact, I saw four eyes...
glowing red with evil looking at me.
 
 
Horrified with what I saw,
I scooped up the cat and
quickly walked away.
I shook my head thinking that
at that time of night ,
I was just seeing things.
Boy, was I wrong.
 
Soon after that night, I was back at the cage,
feeding and watering those damned things.
They didn't chirp.  They didn't sing.
They just looked at me.
A creepy feeling passed over me.
When I was done,
I began to walk away and lo and behold,
they started singing again.
Damned birds.

                    I went to sleep happily under my nice 
                    warm electric blanket.

Who knew that it would be so cold?
Our heat hadn't been working
for quite some time.
My sister took over duties of watching
those two birds as she had always
wanted some birds of her own.
I was happy to know that I wouldn't
have to think of seeing those eyes,
those red eyes peering at me in the dark.
 
 
One cold and quiet night,
when the entire house settled
into its routine creakings and whines,
a little chirp sounded and then died.

 

I hear my mom's making fried chicken tonight.