Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [78]
‘Liza’s legs,’ I went on. ‘Look.’ I got hold of one and tugged; it wouldn’t budge. ‘That’s why she’s so still … she’s stuck. See?’ I showed Mrs Smethurst how Liza’s sharp claws had pierced the X-ray film and had made her immobile. When I’d extracted her claws, she began to thrash around once more.
‘I’m sorry but I can’t go through all that again,’ protested Mrs Smethurst.
‘No, of course not,’ I agreed and snipped through the knots and removed the collar.
Liza strutted up and down her perch triumphantly. Then she stopped, twisted her head over her back, yanked out a broken tail feather and held it in her claws, waving it to and fro like a banner at a victory parade.
Mrs Smethurst sighed. ‘She really is the limit. I don’t how much longer I can put up with her.’
It turned out to be a month. One blustery Autumn day I was presented with the moth-eaten bird and asked if I could find a new home for her.
‘It’s a long story,’ said Mrs Smethurst, taking a deep breath, her bosoms expanding against her cashmere sweater.
‘No hurry,’ I murmured, my eyes drawn to the sweater like two flies to a pear. ‘There’s plenty of time.’
Mrs Smethurst took another nice, deep breath and began. It seems she had started to let Liza out of her cage each day in the hope it would be an extra distraction for her. Yesterday evening, she had walked in, her hair in curlers. Liza, perhaps thinking the curlers were some sort of new toy, flew across and landed on her head. There followed, by all accounts, an agonising tussle as Liza got caught up in a curler, started flapping and scrabbling, her claws digging into the poor woman’s scalp. Here, Mrs Smethurst’s face contorted at the memory. She paused and drew a hand over her sweater. ‘Sorry … if you could just bear with me a moment,’ she said with a little quiver.
‘No problem,’ I replied with a bigger quiver.
Once more composed, she continued. She had staggered about, both she and Liza screaming, getting in an absolute tizz. Her husband had rushed to the rescue with a towel, smothering the bird and his wife’s head. He had finally managed to prise Liza off along with a clump of hair.
‘Can you imagine how it felt?’ enquired Mrs Smethurst, taking another deep breath.
Oh yes … yes … yes. Indeed I could.
The bird had to go, concluded Mrs Smethurst. Would I take her?
Oh yes … yes … yes. Indeed I would.
‘You did what?’ screeched Lucy that evening.
Before I could explain, there was a loud squawk from the hall. Liza, pleased to hear a kindred spirit, had screeched in reply.
We soon learnt what that screech meant – don’t you dare leave me. If you do, I’ll screech the house down until you return. It was the sort of screech that went right through the wall; the sort that screeched through the ceiling and screeched through your cranium, setting your nerves on edge like nails raking down a blackboard. Even Joan and Doug next door heard it and phoned to enquire whether all was well and was it some sort of sick chicken that we were treating.
Liza didn’t squawk so much if let out; so for the sake of our eardrums, she was allowed more and more freedom.
Having given the room the once-over to make sure Nelson or Queenie and her friends weren’t around to upset her, she’d fix her beady eye on me, give a ‘Here I come’ squawk and soar across to land on the back of the settee. Here, she’d bob up and down, her three remaining crest feathers raised, her naked neck stretched out. Her crop often bulged, the white gleam of lumps of peanut showing through the thin grey skin like a nodular abscess about to burst.
With scarcely any plumage left to savage, she decided to have a go at the three remaining crest feathers on the top of her head. To achieve this required considerable dexterity. She would balance on one leg, raise the other foot and tilt her head down to grab a crest feather in her claws. Then she’d tug and tug, pulling her head lower and lower as she tried to wrench the feather out. More often than not, she’d yank so hard that she’d lose her balance and topple forward, cartwheeling down the