Ink Tarsia: word mosaic

When I was a kid, my brother and I competed in the sport of cut-down:  May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.  May the bird of happiness crap on your shoulder. 

In January, we returned to the mountain cabin to discover a bird had moved in.  Evidence suggested a small bird, what a neighbor calls an “LBJ,” a little brown jobber. The bird enjoyed several perches throughout the house, on nearly every piece of furniture except the kitchen table, and particularly the sham on my husband’s pillow.   

That afternoon, we heard a happy chirp coming from the master bedroom upstairs.  We crept quietly up the steps and peeked in the door, to see an LBJ sitting on the old pink armchair, singing in a patch of warm sun coming through the window.   

The bird was not afraid of us.  When the children sneaked too close, the bird simply disappeared by a convenient escape, to chirp merrily in another room–from a bedpost in the boys’ bedroom (nicknamed the Bunkhouse), from a kitchen chair downstairs, from rafters in the downstairs den.   

The finish carpentry for this log cabin is eccentric—the original owner ran out of energy or funds or expertise—and there are holes in corners, gaps between wall and ceiling, mismatched boards, strange configurations of space and storage.  Plenty of fix-up budget will be spent on finish trim. The cabin may have been built from a barn kit; it seems better adapted to horse stalls than bedrooms. 

My youngest boy loves the closets in our bedroom. Abracadabra, he can enter my closet, squeeze behind shelves set in the eaves, and exit through the other closet.  But the bird could slip from an east room upstairs to a west room downstairs  There are more gaps than we realized.  After allowing a single photograph, the wren would reappear to another room and continue singing.  Eventually the LBJ was shooed out a window missing a screen. 

We successfully evicted the Bird of Happiness. 

Not an hour later, we heard chirping upstairs.  This time my oldest boy was prepared.  He consulted his bird book from Grandma, and announced we had a house wren.  Wrens tend to nest in boxes.  This wren selected a heated, 2000 square foot box, and could move freely from outside to in.   

I enjoyed hearing the birdsong in the house, which I did not confess to my husband, who held a contrary view.  The sound of a cheerful song animated the cabin, gave it a heart, like the tick of a deep-toned clock.  Spring sound echoed through the home in a bitterly cold season—surely this was a good omen. Despite LBJ’s significant contribution to janitorial duties, I secretly wished the bird could stay.  We covered couches, tables, chairs with newsprint when we left, hoping he wouldn’t invite a mate, or a house party, before we could return to seal the points of entry. 

In February, my husband slithered through the narrow attic space to tack screening over vents and penetrations.  We didn’t see the wren that day, but learned he now preferred sturdy posts on the upstairs balcony under the skylights, and spent afternoons on the open door to the Bunkhouse.  In March, we found the wren had gone after a brief stay on the Shrader wood stove.  My boys muttered about the Bird of Crappiness as we cleaned the mess.   

Last weekend, there was no evidence of the wren.  I walked outside with the dog after 7:00 a.m., hearing many species of birds fill the glen with song as April sun paints the tips of rocks and pine trees.  I’d like to think the wren found a new home without much trouble, that he had not been trapped in the cabin.   

I’d like to think only one of my brother’s predictions will come true, and that this will not be followed by a plague of fleas.