Marshall Saunders - Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends

After lunch Mr. Martin said he would take our Mary for a drive. The children hurried back to school, and Mrs. Martin said she would go and lie down, for she was tired. “Come with me, little boy,” she said to me, “or would you rather go to the bird-room?”

I flew to the ribbon shoulder knot on her dress. I admired her very much and wished to stay with her.

“Mary,” she said delightedly, “I love to have this little Dicky with me. I wish you would bring one of your small cages downstairs. Put seeds and water in it and hang it on the wall of the sitting-room. Leave the door open, so he can go in and out. Of course he must spend some time each day with the old birds to perfect his song, but I would like him to have the run of the house. I think I see in him an unusual sympathy and understanding of human beings.”

“He is a pet,” said our Mary. “I will be glad to have him downstairs a good deal.”

So it came about that I had a little home of my own in the room of one of the best friends of birds in the city. Our Mary was darling, but she was young. Her mother had known trouble, and she had known great joy, and she could look deep into the hearts of men and beasts and birds. I had a very happy time with her, and got to know many interesting animals and other birds. At the same time I was free to go into the bird-room whenever I wished to do so, but I found after I had become accustomed to human beings that many of the birds there seemed narrow and very taken up with their own nests, not seeing much into, nor caring much about, the great bird world outside our little room.

Therefore, to help canaries and to help friends of canaries to understand them, I am giving this little account of my life—an insignificant little life, perhaps, and yet an important little life, for even a canary is a link in the great chain of life that binds the world together.

TIME went by, and autumn came and then winter. I had been hatched in the early summer, and by winter time it seemed to me that I was a very old bird and knew a great deal.

I had become quite a member of the Martin family, and sometimes I did not go in the bird-room for days together.

My sleeping place was a cage in the family sitting-room upstairs. The door was never closed, and I flew in and out at will. Oh, how interested I was in the world of the house! I used to fly from room to room and sometimes I even went in the kitchen and watched Hester doing the cooking. She had a little shelf near a window filled with plants, and I always lighted there, for she did not like me to fly about and get on her ironing board or pastry table. I became so interested in the family that I thought I would never get tired of exploring the house, but when winter came I found myself staring out in the street. I wanted to get out and see what the great out-of-doors was like.

Early in the winter we had much excitement in the bird-room. A very happy time called Christmas was coming. Everybody gave presents, and Mr. Martin’s gift to his daughter was money to build a fine large flying place on the roof for her birds. We would not be able to use it until spring, but he said the work had better be done in the winter because it was easier to get carpenters than it would be later on, and there were some poor men he wished to employ during the cold weather.

What chirping and chattering and gossip there were among the birds! There was no nesting going on now, and not much to talk about. Soon two men came, and from the big window we birds watched them putting up a good-sized framework out on the roof and nailing netting to it. What a fine large place we should have right out in the sunshine.

There were no fir trees put out there on account of fire. Mr. Martin said sparks from chimneys might start a blaze, but the men made things like trees of metal, with nice spreading branches. A part of this flying cage was covered over—and up under the roof, where no rain could wet them, the men put tiny nesting boxes.

“Why, we shall be just like wild birds,” said my mother joyfully, “with nests outside in the fresh air. What lovely, strong young ones we shall have! It has been a trifle hot in the bird-room in summer.”

My poor little mother had felt the heat terribly through the latter part of the summer, but that had not prevented her from doing her duty by her second family of young ones. They were very interesting little fledglings—three male birds, and three hen-birds, and strange to say my naughty brother Green-Top was as kind to them as he had been unkind to me.

It is no easy matter to feed six hearty young canaries, and it was the prettiest sight in the world to see him fly to the dish of egg food, stuff his beak and hurry to the nestlings with it. He was a great help to my parents. He was the only young canary in the bird-room that helped his parents feed new babies, and the old birds gave him great credit for it.

He would not let me go near the nest. I had politely offered to help him, but he told me in an angry way that I was a rover and despised my home, and if I did not get out, he would pick at my eyes and blind me for life.

“Don’t mind him, darling, darling,” sang my dear mother, who never forgot me. Norfolk, my father, paid no attention to me now. A steely look came into his eyes whenever I went near him, and one day he sang coldly at me, “Who are you, who are you?” though he knew quite well I was his son.

Green-Top was his favorite now. My brother just loved our father and perched near him at night, and was so attentive to him that the old birds said, “That young one will never mate. He loves his parents too well. He will always live with them.”

I never dared sing in the bird-room now, for if I did Green-Top always pulled my tail or looked down my throat. These are great tricks with canaries, to take the conceit out of a bird they think vain. Often when in the gladness, of my heart at getting back into the bird-room I would burst into song, Green-Top would steal behind me and tweak my tail severely, and if he was busy about something, he would wink at one of my cousins to do it for him.

A terrible trouble, a most unspeakable and dreadful trouble, came upon us as a family and poisoned our happiness that winter. My beautiful mother Dixie, who had been allowed to have too many nests and raise too many nestlings in her short life, sickened and died. I shall never forget seeing her fail from day to day. First she had asthma and sat gasping for breath, with her beak wide open. Our Mary did everything for her. She gave her iron tonic and different medicines, but nothing did any good. Day by day her poor little body looked like a puff-ball, and her quick, short gasps for breath were most painful to hear. Her voice failed, and she had to take castor oil and paregoric and glycerine and had rock-candy in her drinking water.

“It is no use,” said our Mary one day. “My dear Dixie, you will have to go, but I think there is a little bird heaven somewhere where you will be happy, and will not suffer any more, and some day all your little family will go to it, and fly about gaily with you ever after.”

My little mother opened her eyes, her very beautiful eyes, though all the rest of her body was drooping and disfigured now. They opened so wide that I thought perhaps she was going to get better. Many times since I have seen that strange look in the eyes of a dying bird—a look of great astonishment, as if they had suddenly caught sight of something they had not seen before. Then the lovely eyes closed, her tiny head fell over, and our Mary said softly, “Her little bird spirit has flown away.”

She held her out in the palm of her hand for all the birds to see, then she took her away, and though it was winter and deep snow was on the ground, she had the gardener dig a little grave and she buried her in a tin box, quite deep in the ground, where no roaming cats nor dogs would get her.