Slim...

Slim was a mockingbird. We got him as a baby. My brother claims he fell out of the nest but I doubt it. We were famous nest robbers as kids...and there were 7 of us. Over the years we had numerous Sparrows, a couple of doves, one crow (he actually was wounded and we saved him), a pigeon or so. It's incredible that my reasonably intelligent parents never questioned the poor avian parenting skills in our particular neighborhood...or they knew and just enjoyed them like we did.

Birds are smart. Slim was over the top smart. He took an immediate liking to my Dad which was not surprising since almost any critter did. He was funny looking at first...patchy feathers coming out of little cellulose tubes near his skin, fat yellow baby lips at the base of his too large beak, tiny veins visible under his skin where feathers had not yet filled in. Just a tiny frankenbird...

He was ALWAYS hungry. I am sure we fed him things we shouldn't have but when you realized that almost any bug you stuffed down his wee gullet would stay down...it sorta turned into the bug challenge...."Guess what I just fed Slim....!" dad pre-emptively outlawed Black Widows...prolly a good thing too...

Apart from us foraging for bugs he had a steady diet of dried Gerber's Baby Food mixed with whatever juice we had leftover...he wasn't picky. I don't think that stuff was even good for babies much less a baby Mocking bird. If you mixed it too thick he looked like a tiny German shepard eating peanut butter...which while hilarious to a ten year old was sure to earn you a whack to the back of your head if the ol' man caught you intentionally feeding him a dry batch.

As a baby all he did was croak for a while...the melodius sonnets we were sure should be rapturously bursting forth (no google...but we did tap the library on this one) were slow in coming. But come they did...at around the same time he started learning to fly. Slim had no shortage of flight instructors. We would each set him on our fingers and the move our hand floor-ward quickly...causing him to flap like a son of a gun...each of us wanted to be master of the maiden flight. By the time he flew he had to have had the wings muscles of a Bald Eagle. We did this repetively until he would get tired and hop off to visit Dad at the kitchen table.

Dad talked to Slim like he was human. Slim would sit there head tilted, bright little eyes focused intently on the ol' man's face, and listen as if the fate of the world hung in the balance. I asked dad why he talked to Slim like he was a person and he said, "Well...he's the only one that listens to me..." Which was prolly a shot across mom's bow as she'd quit listening to the ol' man many moons before. But fortunately, I was too young then to read much subtext into their dysfunction.....

Once Slim took to the air his vocal habits changed immediately. The better he learned to fly the better he learned to sing. And then came the imitating...the teapot whistle? Yep nailed it. He could send you running to the kitchen 3 minutes early...He could imitate a lot of different sounds...but only one made us hate him...Dad's whistle.

Yep...he had it down to a tee...not the regular "getcher-butts-in-here" whistle but the angry "heads-are-gonna-roll" whistle. You must realize this was about 1970...you did not ignore parents...unless you wanted a lump somewhere on your body. If you were out back or in your room and heard that whistle it was like watching firemen spring into action. One minute all is calm and the next everyone's headin' down the fire pole. We would sprint to where Dad was ready to give an account for whatever retroactive foolishness was just now being discovered...

Slim played his "dad card" either from the hanging light in the living room or the telephone wire on the back patio depending on where the bulk of the kids were at. As we ran under him to see what dad wanted he would fluff himself up in a ball...I think this must have been Mockingbird glee. I know he was laughing...

Once dad realized what Slim was doing, he fully condoned it. He would chuckle quietly behind his paper as we all slid to a cartoon stop in front of him..."Yeah dad?"...He would innocently lower his paper, "What do you boys want...?" "well...you called us..." "No I didn't...musta been the bird..." Yeah...musta been...the bird sitting two feet from you messing with your kid's heads...and deriving about the same pleasure you do from it all...

Slim was allowed in and out-of-doors. Dad wanted him to be able to return to the wild. All of us were on board with that also...we were tired of doing windsprints to the tune of a mockingbird. One year he dissappeared...dad missed him. We hoped a cat got 'im...but no. He returned...he would still fly in and out of the house but you could not hold him or pet him like before. The following year he brought Mrs. Slim home and would not even come inside...but he could still call us up to the patio from the back yard much to the enjoyment of his lady friend.

After two seasons of this nonsense he never came back. I was 13 or 14 at this point and not losing any sleep over a Mockingbird...I don't care what Atticus Finch thinks about me either. My dad took a whole 'nuther year to get over telling friends how the small ornery bird could put us all on the run...they would laugh...and he would laugh...and the more we sulked the harder he laughed...

Mockingbirds are jerks.