Hooray! Another non-Boggart book by Susan Cooper. I thought King of Shadows was great and so was mightily disappointed by the Boggart titles. Maybe they were just younger than my usual. Anyway, this was great, another now-and-then book like King but without the blatant time travel, and with a small nod to King as well, with a boy from North Carolina, i.e. Nat, playing Ariel at the current Globe. A fun quick read with Horatio Nelson and Mystic Seaport and the usefulness of reading old books. Good stuff.
Blake likes to hide in his box and to know we know he's in his box. Somehow, having him in his box on the chair next to me is better than having him in his box way off on top of his cage: even though I can't see or feel him, just the proximity matters. His latest oatmeal box held two 4.5 lb. bags and has a handle in one side: a narrow oval window, like an archer's window. Depending on what he's doing in his box, sometimes the tip of his tail pokes through either door or window and it is not permissible (though it is naughtily fun) to give the feathers a quick tug. Sometimes just the beak emerges around an edge of cardboard as he widens the apertures, and if he's concentrating very hard on his chewing sometimes he doesn't notice a finger laid on the upper mandible, at least not for a moment or two. If I could find a box to fit in his travel cage, I bet he wouldn't fret nearly as much on those rare occasions he has to be in it. It would have to have proper acoustics for singing and beak-tapping, of course.
Thanksgiving was a rough day for the buddy: we were cleaning and cooking until 2, and then after guests arrived pretending to be normal people who don't let a bird roam around the house, on the floor, on the dining table, whining whenever whatever is not quite to his liking. I had set him up in the opposite corner of the dining room than usual, out of the way of diners' chairs and with a good view of the kitchen. After the turkey came out of the oven, we opened his cage; during basting he had to be locked up. His schedule was so interrupted that he took his mid-afternoonn nap on top of his cage. I really wanted to get a photograph of him tucked on the corner of his cage--"Blake supervises the Thanksgiving preparations"--but clean hands and tuckage never coincided.
Finally, well after dinner, with RDC's sister and nephew and Maven and Mr. Maven and I playing Scattergories around the dining table, Blake perched on RDC's knee in the living room and told him and his mother his tale of woe of the day. This is a prolonged dirge (or hey, perhaps my new vocabulary word "threnody") about the calamity of his day, distinct from the whistling that accompanies shaving and similar fun activities and from the "I'm so lonely I have to sing to my own foot" blues and from the "I'm not a songbird at all and not a songster like my older brother Percy but I do love this keening that my parents indulgently call song." It involves some whining and some chattering but mostly he sounds like the Scarecrow--"They took my arms and they threw them over there! and then they took my legs and they threw them over there!" Immediately upon finishing (it took a long time, maybe 20 minutes), he yawned himself into a tuck (each yawn ends with his head turned farther and farther around) and went to sleep. Such a hard day.
Since I've been typing he has emerged from his box and demanded a cave. I bent my knees to either side, so he has been playing between my calves under his box. Aha, back in the box. This means I can sign his parent-tether over to RDC without disrupting his play or breaking his heart.