Read Corvus for Free Online Page A

in verdant (or possibly more correctly argent) youth, was a source of continual annoyance to Icarus, who could be seen regularly standing on top of his house biting his feet in paroxysms of rage. For recreation, Icarus chewed his way through the very silly ‘bird playground’ (a structure with a tray, swings and ladders made – entirely unsuitably for parrots – from flimsy wood) that we had bought for Bardie, turning it in a very short time to matchsticks.
    Icarus appeared to live pleasantly enough, to be busy and interested, or so we hoped, probably given more attention than he wanted, thesole threat to his safety being when, from time to time, in the process of waddling along the sideboard, he over-reached himself and fell from the edge, landing with the solid, unmistakable sound of parrot hitting ground.
    It was many years later that we were given Marley, a South American sun conure. He had been bought in Palmers pet shop in London by friends in one of those impetuous moments of foolish, irresistible desire, the kind that override all caution. Looking at him, it was easy to understand why. He was beautiful, a small, brilliantly coloured parrot of yellow, green and orange. Before buying him, my friends hadn’t heard his voice. They soon realised their mistake. On being asked if I would take him, I looked up a book: ‘Sun conures,’ it said with careful understatement, ‘tend to be especially noisy members of the parrot family.’ Marley’s voice, like his beak, could have bisected wood and stone. It turned the air blue and shaky with waves of volume, the penetrating shrieks that were background to my life for a long time, his voice reaching me as I turned the corner towards the house, following me, inexorably, as I walked away. It may or may not have deterred anyone intent upon burglary.
    Marley, when freed from his house, could work his way through the tops of the pine doors (as he attempted to do), through picture frames, mirror frames, tree trunks, beams, possibly girders. Only granite, perhaps, might have provided him with a moment’s pause. When I was out, I worried from time to time that I might inadvertently have left his door open when I put him back after his bath, that I’d come home to find the house powdered: staircase, stairs, doors, lintels, furniture,everything systematically, enthusiastically destroyed by one determined, glorious yellow and orange bird.
    I put Marley into the rat room, from where he could look out of the window at the garden, moving him to the sitting room, from where it was more difficult to hear him, when the noise became too much.
    As with Icarus, we had no idea of his former life, although we suspected maltreatment, initiated perhaps as a response to the inescapable volume of his voice. His lack of trust, his wary confusions meant that he never became the easy, relaxed bird who forms a close, mutual relationship with a human. He was beautiful but not clever, stocky, square, with round black eyes rimmed with white. I showered him a couple of times a week, spraying him with a plant spray, being rewarded always by the look of unsurpassed bliss on what I liked to imagine was his smiling yellow face. He closed his eyes in ecstasy, dreaming of rainforests perhaps, of florestas de varzéa , the faraway world from which he sprang.

    Adopting a parrot beyond infancy is always like adopting a child beyond first babyhood, one with an unknown but possibly unfortunate life to date. One adopts its past, the stamp of every owner – their voices, sounds, indications of mode of life – accompanying it. Its history is marked upon its personality, its view of the world, its optimism or otherwise, its capacity for happiness. As with an infant before it can speak, it can communicate its past only by gesture. There maybe sundry wincings, flinchings, the parrot body language that hints at things unthinkable, the reluctance to allow the approach of humans, the abject terror at the sight of