After our school hours, my brother and I used to assist her to snag beetles, bugs and live worms, as she was too small to fetch it herself. I still remember the tiny fowl, barely with any feathers, covered with red ants all over the body, when we got her from a screw-pine bush near the stream, on the way to our home. There was only little life left in her and we could sense that through the shallow breath reflecting beneath her neck. The body was swelled with bite marks of ants and there were rashes all over her. Her eyes were covered with a thin skin and felt as too pale when we kept her underneath an incandescent table lamp to give the warmth of her mother.
Next day we tried to feed her some biscuit soaked in cow milk using a syringe pump but she could barely had it. We converted a small peach colored laundry basket, filled with red colored satin clothes, as her nest and fixed the table lamp near to that basket to ensure the warmth throughout the day. Slowly she came back to life, eyes opened and new feathers sprouted out to hid the rashes and marks gifted by the ants. Our life and happiness were revolving around her and we started the day near her cage and ended it by saying good night to her. Slowly she got promoted to a nice and beautiful cage, the door of which was always open. She sat over the cage and tried to flap her little wings to learn herself the art of flying as her mother is not with her to teach. She became a great companion for us and we often took her for short walks within our compound wall and she enjoyed it thoroughly when we served her with live worms and beetles.
Months turned her into a beautiful and lovely bird and she still enjoyed her evenings, in our company, like her younger days. We never knew that it need only a minute for the nature to turn the happiness into gruesome sorrow till, on that disgraceful day, we heard that screeching sound, unable to identify the source of it but by sensing an impending unknown danger I made a huge noise out of fear, and in a split of a second, she got disappeared from us forever. Being panicked, rather shocked, we ran around to identify the creature, which was faster than the wind, who had grabbed her and disappeared to nowhere. We could not accept the fact of losing her till we found her beheaded corpse, next day morning, near the chicken coop.
Today, when I was sitting on the balcony, I saw a beautiful Myna with large dark and yellow colored eyes and that reminded me of her, the memory which got buried in my thoughts for past several years. That also had reminded me about her slayer, a white colored pet cat of our neighbour, which we identified after few days of the incident, from the blood stains found on her paws!!
Bijoy P Pulipra