The Dead Parrot  

by sarah kay

 

Recovering from surgery, I’ve had plenty of time to watch the unfolding events of COP26 with a vague hope that given what we had experienced and learned during Covid-19, our global leaders would finally call a moratorium on our addictions to fossil fuels and money markets. Look what we have recently witnessed: melting ice caps, polluted oceans, forest fires, animal extinction due to deforestation and disease. On the plus side the world limped towards cooperation on a vaccine. Scientists and writers who have been shouting in the wings for forty years are finally being listened to. Young people, justifiably angry, potentially face a devastating future. With all of this knowledge and a raft of solutions, we remain preoccupied with selfish distractions. We fiddle, while the planet burns. Yes, some progress was made but ultimately COP26 watered down their recovery plan and went for a methadone solution.  

I wrote this short story on November 15, 2005. Sadly, it speaks more to me today than it did then. I dedicate it to my grandchildren but I don’t want them to read it.  

It all started with a dead parrot. At least that’s my perspective. I remember thinking at the time when the world as we knew it came to an end that there was a terrible irony in the whole situation. A bleak absurdity. There had been occasion when millions of people had belly-laughed at the sketch of a deadpan John Cleese taking on an obdurate Michael Palin as to whether the stiff parrot lying in a cage was in fact, dead or alive.  

This happened in another era altogether. We were due for a fall. A decline, or whatever you want to call it. We had pushed Mother Nature to her limits. I can only think now in apocalyptic images and general sweeps. I cannot think chronologically. All I know is that increased global warming, waves of natural disasters occurred and oil reserves ran out. Droughts, floods, deforestation and low water reserves caused panic. Terrorists, distracted governments and economic pundits predicted stock market crashes and depressions. House prices skyrocketed in the west and in developing countries, the poor died of Aids and malnutrition to the point where aid agencies could no longer cope. The general mood was gloomy. Television stations followed the four horsemen from one disaster area to another. Earthquakes triggered tsunamis. Hurricanes wreaked havoc and volcanoes spewed out lava and dust, which added to the increasing pollution. Even the media were becoming saturated. When Mrs. Jones managed to grow a giant dahlia in Wales that last summer, every television station showed the bright yellow flower, its petals fanned out with pride. I do remember that dahlia.  

There were endless debates and discussions about our decadent consumer societies, our addictions to fast food, gambling, travel, and our struggles with obesity, alcoholism and traffic chaos. The violence in major cities in Europe was escalating out of control. Then the United States invaded Iran and we all watched the bombing on our television screens. Some people must have thought the end of the world was at hand.  

Once again, we were taken by surprise. Or I should say I was taken by surprise. I no longer know what anyone else thinks. Overnight our golden era of technology ground to a halt. I can only speculate at what must have happened. I think quite simply that all the manpower died. I can’t be sure because there is no hydroelectric power and no way of checking. All I know is that one day not so long ago the lights went out, the telephones went dead, television screens faded, all central heating stopped and life as we knew it changed forever.  

Once upon a time...there lived a parrot. I always go back to the parrot. Well, to be fair the parrot was just the messenger. It carried the avian flu, which was to change the course of our history. Those of us who are still here refer in whispers to the times before the Slaughter. I privately think pre-parrot and post-parrot.  

I am careful whom I talk to. All my close friends and most of my neighbours died in the Slaughter. I can’t imagine why I was spared. I’m old and not particularly robust and I don’t want to be here. I would have preferred to die along with all my family and friends. I think about death all the time. There are no doctors or chemists and no medications. So, the easy option of overdosing is not available to me. I could slit my wrists but I can’t sum up the courage. I could starve to death but I don’t have the guts to do that either. There must be something deep down in the psyche, which finds ways to live.  

Lining up for food at the makeshift centre once a week gives me something to do. I don’t use the word survive, because all we do is exist. You need a reason to survive. We scrape through the day. It’s not living. There are no clocks. There is no time. I sleep fitfully when I can. I eat when I have food just like a cat or a dog on the scrounge, and like a wild animal, I live all the time in a state of anxiety. It’s an existence running on tension and exhaustion. Awareness is heightened. The present moment is vivid. Animals of course are used to this. We humans, are cursed with memories. Memories of losses so great, they have buried themselves somewhere in the psyche waiting for a moment of outpouring. It hasn’t happened yet. There’s just a grey numbness. Cold and shivering, I drift into sleep and wake to a soundless grey dawn. There are no more birds. No morning birdsong, and a few leafless stumps, which once were trees. The silence is hard to bear. I used to resent the sounds of the city; the ambulance sirens, house and car alarms and the neighbour’s dog barking. Now I would give anything to have them back. I miss not hearing the sounds. Living sounds. All there is is the heavy deadness of silence.  

After the parrot died, the war started in Iran and governments took their eye off the ball. Birds started dying all around the world. Migrating wildfowl like geese were the first victims. Then it spread to pigeons and garden birds. Panic set in and all wildfowl were targeted. It was the beginning of the Slaughter. The swans that had bred on our canal and who were tame were rounded up and shot along with the mallards and coots. As the Slaughter picked up momentum and people became more frightened, they just threw the terrified birds into plastic containers and let them suffocate to death. You could see the sacks flapping and heaving as the swans and geese struggled. Then human beings caught the virus from the birds and died. Then overnight the virus mutated and became the human form of bird flu. It started in Vietnam and spread around the world within a few weeks. There was an immediate rush to produce a vaccine. But production and distribution worldwide were to take months. The human virus form spread rapidly and killed old and young indiscriminately. In the meantime, the virus spread to pigs. All poultry farms and piggeries were declared unsafe and destined for Slaughter.  

The animal factory farms we had set up to provide us with cheap food became death camps and a holocaust ensued. Then a cat was found infected and the Slaughter policy was extended to all household pets including cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits and mice. Anybody found sheltering or hiding a pet could be fined or jailed. Neighbours reported on each other. The crematoriums used to burn all the corpses became overloaded so people just made giant bonfires. The stench of burning fur and flesh is still in my memory. I can’t bear to think about my cats. There are days, if you can call them days, when I cannot think at all. I have become an animal. I feel ashamed to be human. I shut down all emotions and numbly snooze the time away. Snoozing is different from sleeping. Sometimes I fall into a deep sleep but then I am open to dreaming.  

I am back in my house with its kitchen and bathroom. Rooms so central and which I took for granted. There is a fire in the grate as well as radiators warming the home. There is soup cooking on the stove. My cats sleep on the chairs. It is autumn and the geraniums are still blooming. The vine is changing from lime green to brown. The goldfish in the pond are still feeding in preparation for winter. Leaves are piled high in brown and gold heaps around the garden as if searching for nooks and crannies to nestle in before they decay. The hydrangeas are drying into a glorious lime green. A pair of robins are making winter preparations. He is stabbing for worms in the rich soil and she is nervously watching him as he boldly ventures forth like a knight preparing to joust. My children and grandchildren are living and working in different parts of the world. I communicate with them through email, which is so immediate. I am able to share their lives through this spontaneous piece of technology. I can also communicate with my friends and family all over the world. Everything in my dream is in its place.  

Waking up after one of my dreams is traumatic. There is a brief period of suspended disbelief when a little voice says. This is all a dream and you are back in your world before the day of the parrot but the other voice beckons. It says this is now and you have lost everything. Bone-stripped. I am unable to cry. I slowly defrost. I am still in my house, if you can call it a house. It is a roof over my head. It was looted during the Slaughter and I have burnt most of my furniture to keep warm. I was fortunate to have kept pencils, paper, books, photographs and some matches and candles hidden along with my food tins and bottles of water. I also have a very precious commodity. A bicycle. I dare not even write here where I have concealed my supplies in case someone reads this. As I said earlier, I am becoming an animal. My feral skills are increasing. I am becoming more cunning. I trust no one.  

The avian flu pandemic spread like wildfire around the globe. It crossed species into humans, pigs and then other animals in Africa and Asia became infected and died. In the West, all herds of livestock were slaughtered in an effort to contain the virus. The stench of burning animals polluted our cities. We became vegetarians overnight. There wasn’t enough food to go around. People frantically tried growing their own vegetables with leftover seeds. Most gave up because of looting and stealing.  

The Americans pulled out of Iran not because they won or lost the war but because their soldiers were dying of flu. All healthy soldiers were used to guard hospitals and food depots from people desperate for medical care and basic supplies. Then the hospitals collapsed because the MRSA bug was killing people along with the flu. Many doctors and nurses just never showed up for work. Those who have, died. We were witnessing a rapid meltdown of our infrastructure. A single mutating virus was bringing us to our knees, and we were helpless. We had poured money into armaments and aid thinking we had secured our future, convinced by the politicians that terrorists would destroy us while behind the scenes a minuscule life form was travelling the globe on the wings of a bird. How are the mighty fallen.  

When I go to the makeshift shelter where we trade water and foodstuffs for firewood and seeds, I hear people making the same old arguments.  

“This is God’s punishment to us.”  

“Mother Nature is angry.”  

“We knew it was happening, but we thought we could control it.” 

 “We are going to mutate.” 

I no longer care who is right and who is wrong. All I know is that I have lost everything that is familiar to me that makes any sense. I have no reason to be here, to be alive. I have no idea where my children and grandchildren are and if they are still alive. The worst is not knowing and that I will probably never know.  

Some people are trying to organise themselves. They have set up a system of pooling resources. Most of us co-operate as best we can. But we are guarded with each other. People don’t trust each other. It is like we have to start all over again. Even relationships. Re-inventing the wheel. Wheels without motors for there is no fossil fuel. There are no animals to pull carts. We have burnt the wood and we have slaughtered the horses. In our panic to save ourselves, we have killed off our future. It is rumoured that in the Slaughter people including families killed each other. Some did it to spare their children suffering and some did it out of desperation and greed. I no longer judge. We have killed everything that was living and breathing and that is enough.  

I think about death and dying all the time. I plot and plan. I found some Solpadeine under bits of the lino floor in what was the kitchen and hid it with my supplies. I will use it to ward off terrible pain. I also have another very valuable tool. A spade. It’s useful. I can bury my shit in the hope that it will fertilise this battered soil so that I can grow some vegetables in the warm months. It also serves another purpose. I reckon if I dig down around ten feet I may hit water and will then have my own water supply. Ten feet is a lot of digging at my age but I do a little bit every day. Also, there is not much else to do. I also collect the rainwater in a plastic bucket. But the other use for the spade is that I can dig my own grave. I’ve chosen a spot near the old compost heap. It seems fitting. We can decay together. I just hope I get the timing right. At least there is no chance of being kept alive artificially.  

An irrational fear is that I will run out of pencils and paper. There is this need to communicate even to the blank page. For what: Posterity? Hope? Arrogance? The possibility that a mutated race of people will discover my writings wrapped in plastic in the compost heap? Who were these people of the hydrocarbon age? How will they judge us who died during the Slaughter? Were we any worse than say the Romans? Were we any greedier, more arrogant, more stupid and cruel, or were we just victims of evolution? I go over and over in my mind what went wrong and could we have prevented it. The signs were all there. We had the knowledge, the technology, and the solutions even. What we lacked was imagination.  

I walk along what was once the canal. It’s now a dried-up trench. A shopping cart lies upended along with old beer cans and other plastic bits and pieces tossed into the canal in the days before the Slaughter when people imagined their litter would just disappear. On a sunny day, the sun’s rays catch on the rusting metal and I can see a swan. I know I am hallucinating. We used to have at least thirty swans here during the winter. White, proud swans paddling along followed by the dirty grey cygnets. I can see the old rat holes, empty gaping holes. Before the Slaughter the rats were so tame they would run around during the summer and steal the bread for the swans. I even miss the rats.  

I am always searching for some sign of life other than the sad furtive human beings that have been left behind in what was once a vibrant community and neighbourhood. I liked my neighbours but one of them and I have no idea who it was, reported me to the Pet Control when I tried to save my cats from the Slaughter. Since that day I have been wary of my neighbours.  

Those of us still here have not managed to bond through adversity. We pull together reluctantly, like an exhausted team of donkeys. We don’t share our losses. We are like frozen leftovers from a bawdy banquet; congealed little messes on dishes, which will eventually be thrown out.  

I survive by writing, reading and digging my three holes in the garden: my water hole, my shit hole and my burial mound. It’s also a way of keeping warm and distracts me from continual aches and pains. The cold and the damp are sometimes unbearable and even though I put on layers of clothes my bones rattle and shiver and the arthritis throbs. I think about the days before central heating when the pioneers braved savage winters. How did they manage? They died young. Our golden era predicted that we would all live into our hundreds. What a thought. I am eighty and the idea of surviving like this for another twenty years is unthinkable.  

I used to live my life within my house and reach outward from the comforts of my home. Now it’s the other way around. What happens outside dictates my routine. I am acutely aware of the weather. I always was even before the Slaughter but now I trust my intuition. I can predict rain, changes in temperature, winds and sunshine. My garden is not what it was. Imagine no trees and what that does to the skyline. The plants that grow are what we used to label weeds. The survivors. Widow’s weeds: ivy, borage, and bindweed. I can make mint tea and dandelion roots are tasty.  

I suspect there are some people camped in my shed at the bottom of my garden. I don’t go looking but I hear voices and movement. Brambles have grown up around the shed so we have our territories marked out. The fact that they haven’t attacked me or looted is comforting. I still have a good supply of tinned foods. I try to keep the tins for the cold times; baked beans, tuna, sardines and some soups. And, of course, lots of cat food. I have even eaten heated up cat food on a cold night – sardine and trout – and enjoyed it.  

One night I was burning one of the chairs from the bedroom. The cold was fierce and penetrating. I could do nothing when it was cold except keep moving. I could not read nor sleep. So I built a fire and sang songs. As I warmed up, I sat by the embers and looked out into the night. In a clump of borage, I saw what looked like two yellow eyes. I was finally going demented. I was imagining things. The eyes were there and they blinked. Something alive was out there. I opened the back door, very slowly watching the eyes to see if they would disappear but they stayed. I found myself whispering into the night who are you? Please don’t go. Please stay. We gazed at each other through the darkness for quite a while until frozen with cold, I had to come back into the house and retreat under my blankets by the fire.  

The following evening, I opened up a tin of cat food and put it outside the back door. I watched and waited. I felt a great sense of panic followed by disappointment when nothing appeared. This “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright” was only my imagination after all.  

Then I saw the eyes. This time they peeped out from an old rose bush closer to the house than the borage. Holding my breath, I sat by the little back window and waited. Slowly the eyes moved and I was able to make out the outline of what looked like a fox. The fox made straight for the food and ate it quickly. Instead of running off into the night it sat down and licked its paws and then made its way back into the bushes.  

All day I thought about the fox. I wondered how it had survived. Were there other foxes? Where did it go during the day? Was it a fox or a vixen? I had something to think about other than digging my three holes.  

That evening, I put out more food and some of my precious water. I also left the door open ajar, made a big fire and waited. I could feel my heartbeat. The sense of anticipation was almost a new experience. Feelings I had once had before the slaughter. Excitement, nervousness and dread all rolled into one. Like waiting for a phone call from a new boyfriend. Here I was, over eighty, chilled to the marrow, sitting by a fire in the dark, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a fox. Would he wouldn’t he? He loves me, he doesn’t, he would if he could but he can’t! And then he arrived. Swiftly and silently out of the dark, the fox trotted up to the food and started eating. This was a small fox with a small head. A vixen. When she stopped feeding, she drank greedily and then paused to lick her paws. Through the small window, I could see her looking around and watching the open door. She started slowly walking in through the door. She stopped as she saw me standing very still by the window and then quickly trotted through to what had once been the living room to where the fire was still burning. She saw the pile of blankets, sniffed at them and then settled herself down, gave a sigh and started to doze. I stood still for several minutes hardly daring to breathe and then, leaving the door slightly open, walked slowly into the old sitting room and wrapped myself up in an old blanket and settled down by the fire. She opened an eye but didn’t move and then decided I was harmless and went back to snoozing.  

I fell asleep easily that night and dreamt of my house as it was before the slaughter, when the cats slept in the chairs, and there was warmth and birdsong to herald the dawn. I woke up to find the fox gone. She must have crept out during the night or in the early hours of the morning. The sense of loss and terror was unbearable and I read to distract myself. When I went out later in the morning she was out in the garden lying in the sun. She looked at me and did not run away. That evening, I put out more food and she ate, came in and went straight to her place on the blanket and settled down. I was still tiptoeing around terrified she would leave me but I made an effort to settle myself. That evening, for the first time since the Slaughter, I found the courage to go through some of my photo albums.  

The black pages were damp with mildew but the pictures although curling at the edges still told their story. I was transported briefly through my past life. My childhood, wedding day, baby pictures and life before the slaughter played like a video recorder before my eyes. My past came back to life. Feelings of love and warmth returned to my frozen body parts. I could feel the presence of another. A companion. The vixen had moved from the blankets and was sitting up next to me like a dog, her muzzle facing the fire. Instinctively, I stroked her coat. She felt warm and rough. She smelt foxy. She arched her back as if enjoying the contact. I continued to stroke her firmly, starting up at her neck and pushing my hand down her spine and along her bushy tail. I could sense her aliveness. Her energy like electricity entering my fingertips and flickering up through my arm seemed life-giving. For the first time since the Slaughter, I felt deeply moved. There was a reason to be alive.  

As I stroked the fox, she responded by arching her back. She then turned and looked at me. Her eyes were soft amber pools and I felt myself dissolve into tears. Months of held grief poured out. I sobbed my heart out. All the while, the fox sat by me and allowed herself to be held as I wept for everything that was lost. I wept for an insane world. I wept for my dead husband, my children, grandchildren and all my friends. I wept for my dead cats, animals, birds and every living thing left upon the earth. I also wept with relief and joy at finding this fox.  

I feel a surge of energy. We are going to keep each other alive. I’m afraid to use the word hope. I feel determined. My garden holds promise. I will grow more things. The weeds are now plants. I can trade in my bicycle for food and water. I will find water. There are possibilities, uncertainties for sure, but still possibilities. For now.  

Sarah Kay MIAHIP is a Gestalt therapist.  

References:  

Blake, W. (1794). The tyger. Songs of experience. Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm#song33.  

Chapman, G. & Cleese, J. (1969, December 7). The dead parrot sketch. In Full frontal nudity (Season 1 Episode 8). [TV series episode] In Davies, J.H. [Producer] Monty Python’s Flying Circus. BBC. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw35VUBdzo on 27/01/2022 

IAHIP 2022 - INSIDE OUT 96 - Spring 2022