The Story of Peck Peck.

I was getting a lift to get my lunch in the shopping centre at Port Adelaide. (I was working at Tauondi Aboriginal College nearby). Well there was a little yellow bird in the middle of the car park, a canary. He was looking pretty still, but he was perched upright, a flash of yellow in all that grey bitumen. I guess he must have escaped from his cage or something and got lost. He was being swooped and pecked by Noisy Minor birds.

'Stop the car!' I exclaimed to Karen, my workmate, 'Theres a canary on the ground!' 

She let me out.

A 'P' plater came charging up the car-park in his beefy black car. 

'Stop!' I shouted. 'There's a bird!' I held my hand up, to stop him, and I stood in front of his car pointing at the bird with my other hand. He screeched to a stop. Craning over the steering wheel, he nodded at me.  I tore off my tee shirt (I had a tank top underneath) and threw it over the bird. Then I bundled him up and into Karen's car on my lap. We grabbed a roll and we went back to Tauondi. Upstairs in my office we found a cardboard box with some kind of lid. I put him in. I thought he would die. Birds can die of fright, can't they, and he'd been in the blaring sun, on that black bitumen, and it was a hot summer day too and he was probably dehydrated, shocked, and injured. I just though I'd give him a more comfortable death, in the shade, with a bit of my love going in to him. I unwrapped him in the box, and he looked up at me with his little pink beady eyes. I soaked a tissue in water and dripped some of it in to his beak. He gobbled it up. He chirped! He wanted more! I fed him more water. He started flapping and flapped up in to the air and about the office, fluttering down by Tony's desk (my other work mate). 

'Well he's looking a bit chirpier!' Said Karen.

'Here he is!' said Tony, 'Under my feet!' 

I grabbed my tee shirt and when he settled down I tossed it gently over him again.

Later I took him home. My cat, Ling Ling, she didn't mind. She's a bit odd and she just wanted to be his friend. We called him Peck Peck.

Sometimes I would let Peck Peck fly around the house on his own. He flew, round and around. He loved to perch on the curtains, and the tops of picture frames. He loved yellow things. So do I. It's my favourite colour. Sometimes I would put his cage outside, so he could feel the sun, and the shade, and the wind in his feathers. Cecil and Beverly, the two top-knot pigeons who frequent my back yard, they would come to visit and peck around his cage and chat to him. Sometimes I would catch Magpies or Noisy-Minors swooping on to his cage and scaring him, so I'd bring him in. 

Peck Peck started to sing. He'd chat, and chirp and twitter and he'd wake me up in the morning.

One day after letting him fly about the house, I put him in his cage, out in the back yard, because it was a beautiful day.

My friend rang with dramas about her love life. We talked for an hour. I went outside to check Peck Peck and he was gone. 

I think I hadn't shut his door properly. I looked around but I never saw Peck Peck again. Just some big bully minor birds, and Moses the tame magpie with half his top beak missing. (He gets around okay like that.) Cecil and Beverly still come to visit, and we chat about old times with Peck Peck.

 I painted my kitchen yellow in his memory.

Fran Callen