by Philip Yaffe
I am an animal lover. I love all kinds of animal: dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, ferrets, goldfish, etc. So I was lucky to have a very unusual pet when I was a kid.
I grew up in Los Angeles, One day when walking home from school, I saw what looked like a small ball of brown string lying on the sidewalk. When I bent over and picked it up, I saw that it was in fact a baby sparrow that had apparently fallen out of a next somewhere. I looked for the nest but couldn’t find it, so I took him home.
He seemed to be no more than a few days old, so we didn’t believe that he could survive. But we decided to try. We fed him by prying open his beak and inserting diluted milk with an eyedropper. He became stronger, so we then tried feeding in hardboiled egg white. And he started to grow.
We named him Charlie. We didn’t believe in putting a wild bird in a cage, so his home was a shoebox. However, after a few weeks the natural thing happened; he started to fly. At first it was only short distances, from one chair to another. But then he began circling the living room.
We knew the inevitable day when we would have to let him go was now close. I volunteered for the unenviable task. So one morning, I put him in my hands and walked outside. I opened my hands. He remained there for a few seconds, as if trying to decide. Ten he flew away.
If you know the United States, then you know that in many places the telephone lines are not underground but overhead on tall poles. As I was walking home from school, I saw hundreds of sparrows sitting on the telephone wires. On impulse, I called out �Charlie!� Suddenly, one of them flew down from the wires and landed on my shoulder. I’m certain that the other sparrows were amazed, and I was delighted.
This started a regular routine. Every morning I would take Charlie out and he would fly away to be with his friends. But in the evening, he would fly down from the telephone wires onto my shoulder. We would go inside, where he would eat, then spend the evening flying around the living room before finally going to sleep in his shoebox.
I can’t really express what an amazing experience it was to live with this sparrow. But here are a few examples.
Somehow Charlie seemed to know when I had to get up to go to school. Usually just before 7 o’clock I would feel him walking on my forehead as if to say �Wake up. We have things to do!�
Something else about him: Charlie loved pears. I discovered this one day when he literally dive-bombed me to get a piece of the fruit I was eating. After that, we did things differently. I would put a piece of pear between my lips and he would peck away at it until it was small enough for him to fly away with it.
But the best thing was when I was doing my homework, reading or just watching television. Charlie would land on my shoulder, crawl under my collar, and go to sleep. You can’t imagine how pleasant it was to have this warm, feathery body pulsating against my neck.
This went on for about three or four months. But one day when I was walking home from school, I called out �Charlie!�, and nothing happened. I called again, �Charlie�, still nothing. A third time, �Charlie!� I went into the house, but about every 15 or 20 minutes, I went out to try again. �Charlie!� Still nothing. I did this all evening, and several times the next morning before I had to go to school.
I never saw Charlie again. I hoped that he had met his soul mate and they had flown off to live together as sparrows are supposed to.
Living with Charlie was quite an unusual experience and the memory is still fresh. As my friend will tell you, sometimes when we are at an outdoor restaurant and there are sparrows picking at breadcrumbs, I just can’t resist. I quietly call out: "Charlie? Charlie?"
Of course nothing ever happens, and I know it never will. My indelible encounter with Charlie took place nearly 50 years ago. But as the dictum tells us: Any hope, no matter how vain or improbable, is better than no hope at all. So I still do it. Every so often when dining outdoors, I turn to the sparrows picking at breadcrumbs: "Charlie? Charlie? Oh . . . Charlie."
Philip Yaffe is a former writer with The Wall Street Journal and international marketing communication consultant. He now teaches courses in persuasive communication in Brussels, Belgium. Because his clients use English as a second or third language, his approach to writing and public speaking is somewhat different from other communication coaches. He is the author of In the �I� of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional, available from the publisher (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com). Contact: phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com
