The Bird Language of the Ancients
Grey haired parrot chicken
Valentine’s Day is signaled by mediocre trinkets & bad chocolate in the shops. It feels like a scam, unlike those pageant rituals of Christmas & Easter that have a better perception of purpose. It seems to be leveraging something that should be a daily occurrence. I wake up with the sun each day & like clockwork I have a hardon. A regular testosterone fueled occurrence, not triggered by mental impulse. Its the egg, or the chicken, more about that later. On the rare occurrence when its missing, I think that something is wrong. Have I kicked the bucket? Why is heaven not a cloud & looks like my bedroom? This Valentine’s Day dawned grumpy. eddy had been sulking since the moonlight ride the week before, when I’d taken a short cut home & skipped the caves. He didn’t say much, but I could feel it in the way he was heavy, like an old man who’d been promised a long awaited reunion & was given a lonely lukewarm beer instead.
At first light I loaded him up. “Are we going to see the clan?” he asked, voice still half-asleep. “Yes, eddy.” “Promise?” “Yes, eddy.”
We rolled out of city while the world was still yawning. By the time we reached Biden the sky had gone properly mad. Hot-air balloons drifted like lazy jellyfish above a riot of clouds: dark thunderheads, dirty stratus, fluffy cumulus, pale cirrus, & those wispy mare’s-tails that look like they’ve been combed by angels. A proper monkey’s wedding of weather. Perfect.
I unloaded eddy at the usual spot. He shook himself like a dog coming out of a pond of water, then we were off. First drama: someone had left a gate open & half the district’s horses were loose on the tar, manes flying, eyes wild. We dodged them like matadors, laughing as we thundered past. These were obviously our welcome to the new year of the fire horse. Our own personal arranged welcome from the threads of existence, as much Navajo as feathers. A few kilometre on I pulled over to admire a patch of weggooi sonblomme, sunflowers someone had chucked out of a bakkie that had taken root anyway, some bright yellow oasis in the Cradle’s dust.
We crested the last hill before the caves & I heard it: a strange, liquid chatter drifting up from the rocks. Not Afrikaans, not English, something different. “What’s that, eddy?” “It’s our language,” he said quietly. “The one we made from bird calls. The language of the ancients.”
eddy’s soul, I’ve always known, is older than both of us. Some grey-haired humanoid who walked out of the Cradle when the world was still wet & new. The clan are his people, echoes of them, anyway, still hanging around the limestone, waiting for someone who’ll listen. I’m sure this assertion makes me a nut case to some. I approach it like a cold blooded mathematician dealing with the irrational. It a damn good story not be be wasted.
I pedalled slowly while he spoke to them in a high, fluting tongue. It sounded like weavers arguing with hadedas. I didn’t understand a word, but the hair on my arms stood up anyway.
We reached the little church at the end of the road, the one that’s really just a cairn of rocks that looks like a monument. Mike’s van with coffee van was there, as always. I bought myself a flat white & sat on the concrete bollard next to eddy, legs dangling, steam curling into the cool air.
“So what were you lot on about?” I asked. “The iron birds,” he said. “Which ones?” “Those that fly over us here & land where you buy the chicken pies.” “The Boeings?” “Yes. That is what you call them.”
I waited. “The ancient grey-hairs want to know if the iron birds chased the eagles away.”
I almost spilled my coffee. “No, eddy. The farmers did that. Pesticide for the crops. The Martial eagles have been here since forever & now… well, not so much.”
He was quiet for a long time. “Bad farmers,” he said at last. “Yeah. Mankind’s a bunch of pricks, mostly.” “Yes,” he agreed. “But you’re all right.”
I laughed, then had an idea. “Listen, I can cluck like a chicken. Proper boere hen. Do you reckon if I do it the ancients will answer?”
eddy’s handlebars twitched, the bike equivalent of raising an eyebrow. “Try it.”
So on the way back, as we rolled past the caves again, I let rip. A full-throated, farmyard cluck that would’ve made my ouma proud. The sound bounced off the rocks & suddenly the hills answered. Thousands of voices, all clucking back at me in perfect unison. Then they started chatting with eddy in that same bird-language, a rising & falling tide of sound that made the hair on my neck do the wave again.
When we finally crested the hill & left the caves behind, the chorus faded. “What did they say?” I asked, still grinning like an idiot. “You are a parrot chicken,” eddy reported solemnly. “A grey-haired parrot chicken.”
He laughed so hard the whole bike shook. I nearly fell off.
A little further on I stopped to watch a bull in the grasslands, fat & glossy, with one of those old copper bells round his neck that rang out to the beat of his chewing. He looked at us, chewed once, then lifted his tail & dropped a heroic pile right there on the grass. “BS,” I said. “BS,” eddy echoed, & we both lost it again.
The sun was properly up by then, warm on my back, the road rolling out ahead like an old friend. I clipped in, gave eddy a pat on the top tube, & pointed us to Biden.
Just for good measure I went past the Home of the Chicken Pie for a full brown paper bag of them. I bought the Chicken Jalapeno ones but asked the guy if they had any Parrot Chicken ones? He pissed himself.
Some Valentine’s Days you get flowers & Toblerone. I got escaped horses, ancient bird-talk, a flat white, & a bull taking a shit. As well as a clan that thinks I’m a grey-haired parrot chicken.
I’ll take it.