Bird Brain

by Guy Kennaway

  ‘No! No! No! Nooooooo!’ a hen screamed.

  ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, DON’T … DON’T!’ cried another.

  He pushed under the bottom of a thorn hedge, squeezed through a hole in some rusty stock-proof netting and found himself looking at long rows of metal cages stretching across a field. Banger looked around, took a glance upwards, sniffed the air and decided it was safe to press forward. Each cage held nine pheasants, one female and eight cocks. In the first cage two cocks were battered and bleeding, and a third had gone mad. This pheasant squawked ‘I’m outta here folks!’ and flew up to smack his head and back on the wire roof of the cage, then picked himself up, shook his head and said ‘I’m outa here folks!’ and repeated the process, over and over again.

  It was a breeding farm. The fertilised eggs of these hens rolled down the sloping floor into a rusting trough where they were collected and taken to the incubation units. Banger glanced up; a large male owl swept the sky over him, outstretched wings feathering the air.

  Banger darted under the cages, where the grimy earth was flecked with the poo and blood that dripped from the birds above.

  The predator swooped across the top of the cages, carving the air with its scimitar wings. When the owl had worked out that all the birds were beyond reach, it gained altitude and banked away towards a black wood beyond a stained bungalow.

  But Banger didn’t move; he sensed that there was something else out there. He focused his ears and eyes on the darkness, and detected something, some shape, moving beyond the hedge.

  He heard a suppressed human cough, then watched a man, dressed head to toe in black, with a balaclava over his head, creep towards the cages.

  The man started talking to the pheasants in the cages. ‘Bastard farmer,’ he said, then whispered, ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard.’

  A flashlight clicked, right above Banger. In the pool of light the man took a pair of bolt cutters to the padlock on the first cage. The metal jaws closed around the steel hasp until, click, they cut clean through. He rattled the padlock, threw it on the grass and sprung open the door of the cage.

  ‘Be calm,’ he murmured, as he carefully lifted the hen out of the cage. ‘Come on, my little friend.’ He set the bird down the grass, and knelt beside it, giving it a quick stroke.

  The dazed hen fell on her side, unable to walk properly.

  There was a crack as another padlock snapped open.

  A cock was put down beside her.

  ‘Get away from me,’ she screeched, rising to her feet, and limping lopsidedly away.

  The man in the balaclava got a camera out of his pocket and held it in front of him, the red light flickering before it flashed.

  Soon there were about forty traumatised birds staggering around in the darkness, knocking into each other. When one of them wandered near a shed there was a tick, and the whole scene was bathed in harsh light. The man froze, then crouched down.

  A light flicked on in the bungalow. A door slammed shut.

  ‘Shit,’ the man whispered.

  A farmer wearing a coat over his pyjamas ran out into the light, gripping an axe handle.

  ‘You vandals!’ he roared. ‘Where are you?’

  He kicked a stray pheasant back in the direction of the cages.

  ‘Come on, you coward, show me your face!’

  The man in the balaclava stood up. ‘Birds are born to fly,’ he shouted. ‘You take their freedom, we pay you a visit, torturer. People for Pheasants forever!’

  The farmer ran at him, waving the handle around his head. The figure in the balaclava sprang towards him, fists flailing. They combined in a grunting thumping unit, grappling with each other, but soon parted when the farmer ran bent-double back to the house shouting, ‘Ryan! Ryan!’

  A hen who was attacking any male she could lay her claws on chased Banger out from under the cages.

  ‘You little shit, you are going to get it now!’ she screamed.

  Banger ran into the feet of the farmer’s son, who was sprinting from the house, and felt the lad’s thick fingers grab his neck. He was picked up, swung through the air and stuffed into a cage where a dead hen lay on her back. The man slammed the cage door and leant down to grab some other pheasants, but just as he was stuffing them in on top of Banger he was grabbed from behind by the man in the balaclava. Banger struggled to get up through the heap of pheasants on top of him and clambered out of the cage. He landed at the feet of the man in the balaclava, who bent down, picked him up, grabbed another bird with his other arm and ran with the two of them through the gap in the hedge.

  While the farmer and his son rounded up their birds, some pheasants ran through the hedge and wandered aimlessly in circles in an adjoining field.

  ‘Freedom!’ they squealed.

  But the tawny owl, carving through the night air, had heard the commotion and returned for an evening snack. He opened his wings, extended his talons and plucked a feeble-looking cock from the ground. While airborne, he tore off the pheasant’s head and swung away towards the wood, returning a few minutes later empty clawed. The owl took another four pheasants before he swept away into the darkness.

  32

  Special Branch

  GILES BURNWOOD, CHAIR AND founder member of People 4 Pheasants, stood at his stall in the pedestrian precinct of Chester city centre. On a folding decorator’s trestle table were carefully arranged home-made pamphlets and membership application forms. Giles was a spindly man in his mid-thirties, with a narrow head, big ears and long nose that poked out from under a green hat festooned with badges. As he proffered leaflets the crowds swerved away from him, like a river around an island. It was different when he had worked with the Animal Liberation Front, with their photos of smoking beagles and blinded rabbits. They really drew in the passers-by, but pheasants, even those cooped up in cages or hanging in hundreds on game-carts, left the public cold. Since branching out on his own Giles had managed to recruit two volunteer workers. These two, in their turn, tried to recruit new members, but Lynn, an anorexic, and Ruth, who was heavily moustached and kept up a heated conversation with herself, were not PR naturals. In the six months Giles had been helming People 4 Pheasants they hadn’t even attracted a Special Branch infiltrator, the bare minimum for any self-respecting animal rights group in Britain.

  Giles didn’t care. People could laugh at him, and they did, but if they only knew what he got up to in secret they wouldn’t be so dismissive. By day he was the Clark Kent of the Chester Animal Rights world, by night, with his balaclava and bolt cutters, he was the Superman. At five o’clock he packed away the literature, folded up his table and left the city centre, not because the streets had emptied, but because he feared being beaten up by drunken office workers. In a faded Nissan, he drove home to a village a few miles outside Chester, where he occupied an end of terrace starter home.

  At the kitchen door he saw a butterfly struggling at the glass. He cupped it in his hand and took it out into the garden, where he let it attach to his single tree, a young cherry, out of reach of the pheasants that were sitting on the lawn. Then he untied a sack of organic birdseed and walked onto the worn patch of lawn casting handfuls to the dozen pheasants, speaking tenderly.

  Banger watched Giles from the shade of the larchlap. He was thinking about the time he had seen Victoria, aged thirteen, placing a red admiral butterfly on a saucer of sugared water, one summer afternoon a long time ago. He had laughed at her, trying to teach her the futility of kindness.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ Victoria had said. ‘Come on, have a little drink.’

  It had annoyed him that she was trying to revive a dying butterfly. When it fell over on its side, Banger had said, ‘I told you you were wasting your time.’

  ‘I didn’t waste my time. I tried to save it, that’s not a waste of time. Now I am going to bury it.’ Banger squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his claws at the memory, which now made his ears sing with a high-pitched whine.

  Giles walked towards Banger.r />
  ‘Here you are,’ said Giles. ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty to go round. Don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you, that’s it, come on …’

  Most of the pheasants in the rescue centre were wounded or shell-shocked from the shooting season. Some, like Banger, had been picked up by Giles and brought to safety, but others had just heard about the sanctuary and found their way there. There was a hole in the hedge behind the compost heap that was busy with comings and goings. These new arrivals brought news, and Banger asked if any of them had come from Marfield.

  ‘I’m from the Duke’s,’ one said.

  ‘Me too,’ said another.

  ‘I’ve heard of Marfield,’ said the first bird. ‘Isn’t that the place where a bird pooed on a Gun?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Banger.

  ‘I think they had a bad time of it. Very few survivors, from what I’ve heard.’

  In the evening Giles got to work on the campaign; sitting at his computer, hammering the keyboard, ‘raising awareness’, a fairly futile task, involving splashing around (it had none of the buoyancy of surfing) hyperspace, ranting on any forum or messageboard he thought even vaguely connected with animal issues. The local MP had Giles’s e-mails programmed to fly straight to his spam folder.

  Under Giles’s desk, in a box beside the wheezing computer, was his children’s book about pheasants. Aimed at nine year olds, it nevertheless ran to nine hundred and eighty pages of closely typed prose. Titled Philip Pheasant and the Holocaust, it had been turned down by every children’s publisher in Christendom. The manuscript itself shimmered with anger.

  Giles had ditched that project, but still dreamt of a title appearing that would do for pheasants what Fantastic Mr Fox had done for foxes. He had written to Michael Morpurgo many times suggesting storylines featuring heroic pheasants; and Morpugo, who had politely replied to the first few letters, now remained silent on the subject. Ever optimistic, Giles believed that the great author was mulling it over, and would soon produce War Pheasant, or Kaspar, King of Pheasants. A book that woke the people up to the situation. Forty million pheasants a year bred to be killed. The statistic was never off Giles’s tongue for long.

  But Fantastic Mr Pheasant remained a fantasy. Roald Dahl couldn’t write it. He was dead, and anyway had been responsible for the worst book ever written about pheasants, Danny the Champion of The World. This bigoted and bitter story of a poacher waging a battle with a landowner by competing to slaughter innocent bystanders – pheasants – was responsible, in Giles’s opinion, for the heinous injustice of consistently depicting the birds as unintelligent and expendable.

  After reading Danny the Champion of the World, most people warmed to Danny’s father, who Giles considered a devious, irresponsible killer, to whom poaching pheasants was ‘a little fun at night’. Giles owned a copy of the book (furiously annotated) in the house, because it had been given to him by his mum, but when Giles, aged sixteen (he was a late developer), had read the words ‘If only I could find a way of knocking off a couple of hundred birds in one go. Now wouldn’t that be the most fantastic marvellous thing if we could pull it off, Danny?’ he had hated Roald Dahl for ever.

  Danny’s dad, Giles was quick to inform anyone who would listen, was meant to be this fantastic father, but not only did he not send Danny to school until he was seven, he allowed him to pump petrol aged eight, and left him at nine to sleep alone in a caravan lit by an oil lamp, without telling him where he was going. He also threatened to go round to Danny’s maths teacher’s house and beat him up. Danny’s dad railed against Victor Hazel, the local landlord, villain, and pheasant shooter, but Danny’s dad killed pheasants with poison. At least Hazel had the good grace to use a shotgun. Danny’s dad’s method of extermination had the reek of Auschwitz.

  The days were getting a little longer, Giles had not drawn the curtains, and Banger crept down the garden, over the crazy paving and onto the window ledge to watch the man at work. Giles turned from the computer and saw Banger looking at him, and as was as his habit, waved and smiled.

  ‘Hello, fella, how are you? Hungry?’

  Giles picked up a bowl of seed and carefully put the window on the latch, offering the bowl to Banger, who started to eat. Giles’s hand touched Banger’s feathers. At first Banger flinched, then settled.

  ‘You’re a friendly one, aren’t you?’

  Banger detected the warmth of central heating in the house, and poked his head around the frame.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’

  Banger stepped inside.

  33

  Full and Final Settlement

  SPOT HEARD THE red Post Office van first, then Tosca heard it, and then Sunshine – but only after she had stood on Victoria and looked out the picture window to see what the commotion was about. The van came up the puddly muddy track from the bungalow, and drew up beside the old Lanny. Victoria opened the door and the dogs streamed out barking. They didn’t like the posty because nearly every time he came he made Victoria cry.

  This time she was called out of bed and made to sign for a letter, which she duly opened and read.

  It was from Morgan Collishaw, the private bank that William was a director of, and which had invested Victoria’s nest egg, and was written on perceptibly ribbed paper.

  Dear Miss Peyton-Crumbe,

  Your £500,000 investment in the M&C 2005 High Altitude Gold Reward Unit Fund.

  Following statutory valuation of the above fund by the Official Receiver, it has been calculated that all participants will receive a final settlement of 0.6p in the £. This we believe is a good offer, and we have accepted it on your behalf. It will give rise to a final valuation of your holding of £3,000. Our fees, including VAT, amount to £2.993.50, so I have pleasure in enclosing a cheque in your favour made out to the sum of £6.50 in full and final settlement.

  May I say at this point what a pleasure it has been for all of us at Morgan Collishaw to advise you as a client. I know that on this occasion the outcome has not been precisely as we predicted, but given the vicissitudes of the market, we are comfortable with our performance as financial advisors and look forward to being at your service should you have any more capital in need of investment.

  I remain, madam, most sincerely …

  Victoria let the letter flutter onto the dirty lino, put her head in her hands and moaned.

  ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no …’ she said into her fingers.

  ‘Doesn’t look good,’ said Sunshine, ‘doesn’t look good at all. She’s going to need a cuddle.’

  Later that afternoon Tom came back from school in a council taxi. The dogs were out when he burst into the Pemberley Sovereign, saw his mother and said, ‘What’s happened now?’

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Read it.’

  Tom went quiet and then said, ‘Six pounds fifty? Six pounds fifty?’ and flopped back against the featherweight cushions.

  ‘We’ll have to sell the Lanny,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s all we’ve got left.’

  34

  No More Funny Stuff

  RESTORED TO HEALTH and fattened on Giles’s supermarket feed, Banger was about to leave the rescue centre and strike west when something intervened: sex. Not for Giles; he was a loner. The single upturned mug on the draining board, the game of patience suspended on the kitchen table, the solitary armchair facing the wood-burning stove, and the threadbare smalls on the washing line all attested: single human male.

  But for everyone but Giles, the mating season had begun. The thoughts of the animals in the woods, among the anemone and violets, and along the newly green hedges, now draped with a lace of hawthorn blossom, turned to shagging. They did it methodically, like the bees around the cherry blossom; playfully, like the white butterflies with orange wingtips; and flagrantly, like the swinger rabbits on the sandy bank at the bottom of Giles’s garden.

  Banger was pleased to discover that arrangements for sex among pheasants were quite different to those for humans. As a human he had never
quite got the hang of things like being nice, listening, helping, and empathising. Just talking to members of the opposite sex had been a challenge to Banger. His wife Dora was little more than a stranger when they married, and over the next thirty years they had steadily grown apart. She found emotional solace in her horses, who loved her more fully than her husband ever could.

  Dora had dealt with Banger’s coldness by decamping to planet horse, where she abided more happily than she had on planet earth. Her human contact consisted of farriers, saddlers and grooms, but her deepest interactions had been with her horses, with whom she had enjoyed complex and rewarding relationships. There was once a bad car accident on the lane near Llanrisant involving a group of ramblers, probably caused by pheasant young playing on the road. Banger and Dora rushed from the house to see what had happened. Dora ignored the badly wounded driver and crushed pedestrians, and stood staring over the hedge worrying that the noise had scared the horses in the adjacent field. When she had talked, Banger often couldn’t distinguish which species she was referring to.

  ‘Charlie’s low again, I’m afraid,’ Dora once said. ‘He’s off his food and can’t exercise. It’s been years of trouble with him,’ she sighed.

  ‘Maybe the time has come to have him put down,’ Banger replied.

  ‘You can tell him yourself,’ Dora said, ‘he’s invited us for a drink on Thursday night.’

  And another time, ‘There’s a problem with Max’s back. The physio can’t get to the root of it, so I’m taking him to the hospital for a scan.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Send him my best,’ said Banger.

  ‘I will,’ Dora said. ‘He’ll be pleased you care.’

  ‘Tell him he must come up for a day’s shooting next season.’

  ‘Not that Max,’ said Dora. ‘My Max. The Irish bay.’