He stands on the chair beside me, nuzzling my writing arm. He is so glad to be released from his overnight stay in the kitchen. In spite of his soft bed, fresh water and food, his litter box in the petit coin, he’d much rather sleep on our faces. But we need sleep, too.
He sounds like a little fire. I put down my pen, pick up the pink brush, and comb his white and gold fur. He lifts his face so I can get at the thick Elizabethan ruff beneath his chin. Marley, Marley.
When he’s happy, the fur puffs up around his face, and he reminds me of a bumblebee, drunk on pollen.
It’s too cold now in Paris to leave the windows open. And anyway, Marley’s not as interested in prowling on the ledge since the Tourterelles were evicted.
<http://parisplay.squarespace.com/journal/2011/9/16/conversation-entre-les-tourterelles.html>
One morning, shortly after the first egg was hatched, we opened the curtains to see if their second egg had hatched. The older chick had been gobbling food for days.
The nest was gone. Gone. Our neighbors’ grimy window had been “cleaned,” that is, someone had opened it and rubbed a rag in careless circles, leaving swirls of dirt on the glass.
What had they done with the nest? Swept it out of the geranium box? Madame and Monsieur Tourterelle might have flown away, but the three-day-old chick could not have survived, and the egg would surely have smashed.
This was the first and only video we had of that chick.
We wanted to go down to their apartment and bang on the door. But the building is one adjacent to us, and we don’t have the entry code.
What kind of people, we wondered, cannot wait two weeks for two baby doves to gain the strength to fly, before sweeping aside a nest?
Had they seen Richard’s camera pointed at their window, and felt paranoid? No, he’d made sure there were no humans around when he photographed the doves.
So hard-hearted; they were hard-hearted. Can anyone be callous towards animals and birds, and tender towards humans?
What do you think?
To celebrate the life of the Tourterelles, and to kick off a second Surrealist Café event, in which you readers participate in Paris Play, we ask the following:
On Saturday, October 29th, at 1 p.m. in your time zone, go to your favorite café, and write or photograph or draw or compose a tune about an animal, or fish, or bird you see that day, or one who is dear to you, or an imaginary beast, or your totem animal. Write or photograph or paint from a human perspective, or from the animal’s point of view. Don’t be intimidated if you’re not an artist. Last Surrealist Café, every contribution was imaginative.
Send it to us by e-mail the following Wednesday, November 2 (absolute drop-dead deadline), and we’ll post the best work on Paris Play Saturday, November 5th.
Marley just leapt back on the chair, nudged my arm, and started purring like a bonfire, like a champion Swiss yodeler.
