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peep, to my great relief. In the hallway between office and kitchen, I fed the fish first, if only to spite Sterling, who was still crowing about his toast. As a matter of principal I ate my piece first, which didn’t sit well with him at all. Even if he did say, “Please,” I wasn’t eating second to a bird.
    After Aphrodite got her blend of pellets, broccoli, lettuce, and fruits, along with her peanuts (in the shell, un-cracked), I moved on to Sterling’s breakfast. He took the toast in his beak, finally shutting up and focusing instead on tearing impressively large chunks out of the buttered bread while maneuvering it with his talons. He received double the food: bowls inside the cage and on the top aswell, near his exterior perch. His favorite nut was the walnut, which I lightly cracked on the butcher block with a hammer.
    Krishna ate shelled peanuts, while Bonsai preferred his in the shell (“He loves a challenge!” according to his printout), so I only cracked his nuts lightly with the handle of the hammer rather than the head.
    Bev had asked me to speak to the birds. This shouldn’t have felt as strange as it did, since I’d always spoken to dogs and cats—those with whom I’d grown up, cared for at the pet store, and even met on the street. I think the primary difference was that not a single one of those animals had ever spoken back to me, as Aphrodite and Sterling could. I’d never been spoken to by a bird—or any other non-human—before, and it was far more off-putting than I’d anticipated.
    â€œAll right, Bonsai,” I ventured. “Yum, yum. I like your bell!” He, unlike his more fluent friends, said nothing.
    With the riotous sun salutation behind us, and the birds happily sated on their nuts and seeds and fruit, it was time to start back at the beginning with Bindi, Echo, and Nora’s cages. This time I washed and refilled their water bowls and replaced the food- and droppings-spotted newspaper lining.
    I hate the feel of newspaper; I have for as long as I can remember. When I was young, recycling was my household chore (“If you’re going to be part of this family you have to contribute!” my parents said). I shuddered to handle the weeks’ worth of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, packing them in to paper bags to be placed curbside. I can only guess that my loathing of that smooth, sooty texture stemmed from the moment when, at the inquisitive age of four, I decided that I’d like to know what a cardboard box tastes like, so I licked one when no one was looking.
    By the time I got to Bonsai’s cage in the front room, my hands were so covered in bird pee, guano, and wet seed that I hardly noticed the feel of the newspapers anymore. I was effectively wearing bird-shit gloves. Cleaning Bonsai’s cage was an exercise in balance, keeping all the peanut shells from tipping onto the hardwood floor. This, now that I looked more closely, might not have been such an issue after all, since there was plenty of poop splattered along the floorboards as well. I mentally added mopping to my list of morning to-dos.
    After I finished with the cages and the sweeping, cleaned the kitchen of fruit rinds and shells, packed away all of the seed in the pantry, and mopped up the crusted remnants of bird droppings from the floor, I was feeling like Cinderella of the animal kingdom. Before I left Sasha and Max and their many feathered friends for the day, I went back through the binder to be extra sure I hadn’t forgotten any critical steps or instructions. The dogs could access the back patio throughout the day by going through the kitchen, under the broom, and out the dog door in the back room. Sterling was roaming free, no doubt annoying the shit out of Aphrodite. I was pretty sure I’d heard a “ cabrón ” out of her, directed, I assumed, at her neighbor. Bonsai tinkled merrily as he