The Lovebird (5 page)

To feel seen was such a pleasure, and I supposed that if I let Simon make me into what pleased him most he would never stop looking. So I was Simon’s girl for the shaping, and I read the books he recommended. But even Simon, incisive though he may have been, couldn’t have predicted the depth of my response to all he showed me.

Dad had sometimes told me if I looked closely enough I could see that there was always a bit of heaven on earth. I knew he was right: I saw it easily in the orange blossoms, and in the sweet moments that sometimes flashed between us. But I had never
considered that there was a bit of hell on earth, too, until I read about factory farms.

Those places, which produced most of the pork, beef, and poultry that I had long regarded as everyday sustenance, were home to practices so brutally inhumane I could hardly believe they existed in the twenty-first century. Personable pigs, gentle cows, and sensitive, sharp-witted birds who later became mere pieces of meat led, with far too few exceptions, completely confined lives full of emotional misery and physical torture.

I could no longer bear to eat the flesh of creatures who had known so much fear and anguish, who weren’t free to feel the sunshine, flap their wings, or even so much as take a step, whose bodies were cut up in countless ways—their beaks, ears, teeth, tails, and more all sliced off while they were still alive, without painkillers—who screamed and cried out to no avail, who were separated from their young or else forced to nurse without ceasing, and made to dwell in the dirtiest of environments, sometimes among the dead bodies of their fellows.

“The meat available at the market today is not anything like it was one hundred years ago before the advent of factory farms. These animals have a completely different quality of life—they have
no
quality of life,” Simon said. “Not that an animal’s good or happy life is any justification for eating it,” he added. “It isn’t. Ever. They aren’t ours to eat. The only solution is veganism.” After all that I had read, it was easy to agree.

Medical, psychological, and cosmetic testing on animals were, I discovered, equally problematic, and much of what went on in labs shocked and saddened me. The animals used in circuses, rodeos, horse and dog racing, and wildlife parks were exploited, and often mistreated. Oh, how my ovary ached. There were too many living beings who were treated as unfeeling objects—and all so people could have the luxury of eating favorite foods, using particular products, wearing certain clothes, or being entertained.

I deposited my genuine leather peep toe shoes, along with all my other animal-derived adornments (an angora cardigan, a wool coat, glossy oxfords, the fur-lined mittens with which Dad had gifted me one Christmas that I’d never had occasion to wear), at the Goodwill. I stopped, as Simon had put it, “consuming the products of cruelty.” My cheeks became silky, my hair shiny, my eyes bright.

Simon and I talked about animals every evening. “You’re so beautiful. Your heart is so wide open,” he said, looking amorous and awed after I summarized (with tears spilling from my eyes) the travesties about which I had most recently learned, or read aloud from an animal rights–angled essay I had written for one of my classes (“An Unnatural Life: The Practice of Beekeeping in Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
”).

Annette observed us quizzically from her perch in front of the extravagant three-story dollhouse her maternal grandparents had presented to her after her mother’s passing. Sometimes she interrupted us with questions (“What is a ‘bucking strap’?”), and sometimes she crawled onto my lap to comfort me, patting my forehead and cheeks and singsonging, “Don’t worry, Margie. Everything dies at some time.”

About six weeks after I moved in, Simon decided I had graduated from my survey of Crimes Against Animals and introduced me to what, were it to be included in a course catalog, could only be described as Collaborative Fieldwork.

“I can see you have a feeling about all of this, a genuine feeling, as I do,” he said one night while I cleared the table of our dinner plates, which still held mostly untouched portions of a tempeh-and-fennel casserole that resembled shredded paper. (I had agreed to prepare our nightly meals but was new to the art of vegan cooking. “Dad, I’m still hungry,” piped Annette, chewing on a fork tine.) “I lead an activist organization called Operation H.E.A.R.T.,” Simon continued. “That stands for
Humans Enforcing Animal Rights Today. It has a small student membership. Would you like to take part?”

A FEW DAYS LATER, I PUT ON
my lucky red Chinese shoes and Simon took me to Gelato Amore, a two-story café I had never before visited in San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood. Bluesy tunes came through the sound system. Upstairs, a narrow-faced fellow wearing a tweed newsboy cap sat alone, chewed his bottom lip, and studied a big book entitled
America’s National Parks
. A smiling young man in a torn T-shirt came up the stairs with a tub full of dirty dishes and disappeared into a hidden kitchen, leaving an inexplicable smell of gardenias in his wake. A group of five college students sat around a table in an obscure corner. They heralded our arrival with a few waves. Simon introduced me. “We have a new crew member,” he said with one hand resting impersonally on my shoulder, betraying no hint of his familiarity with the rest of me. “This is Margie Fitzgerald.”

The members of Operation H.E.A.R.T. had all renamed themselves after creatures. There was a pretty blonde with a flower in her hair named Bear, a bespectacled gentleman in a wheelchair who called himself Ptarmigan, a girl with a blue-black bob who strummed a guitar and said her name was Raven, and a sturdy tomboyish type who tipped her hat and introduced herself as Orca. “And I’m Bumble B.,” said a red-haired boy with baby dreadlocks just starting to appear in his hair. He set aside the digital compass with which he’d been tinkering. “That’s ‘B’ with a period, not ‘B-E-E.’ ” He shook my hand.

AS SIMON HAD EXPLAINED TO ME EARLIER
, Operation H.E.A.R.T. had recently scored some significant coups against both local and large-scale animal exploiters. The slatternly owner
of a puppy mill in Poway—into which the Operation crew had snuck one balmy night—appeared on the local news after she awoke to find her front door emblazoned with the purple-painted phrase “Kanine Killer!” (“The intentional spelling error made it more memorable,” Simon noted). After neighbors told curious cops that the sounds and smells coming from the mill seemed “off,” it was investigated and, because of its pitiful preponderance of malnourished pups, shut down. Then the Operation created a pamphlet entitled
The Circus: Hell for Animals
, and distributed thousands of copies of it citywide to coincide with the arrival of Barnum & Bailey. The size of the crowd inside the colorful tent, the
San Diego Sun
reported, was noticeably modest compared to previous years.

My first mission with the Operation concerned a Pacific Beach pet store that the crew had staked out for two months: Azar’s Pet Palace. During that period, spies (Ptarmigan and Bumble) posing as shoppers had observed that numerous birds, including canaries, finches, and parakeets, had died from dehydration and unsanitary living conditions. The owner of the pet store, though generous with seed, was less conscientious when it came to refilling water cups and cleaning out cages.

“What we need,” Simon said, “is to get someone in there who can get those birds
out
.” I couldn’t help but think of Old Peep, who, under Dad’s delinquent care, may have suffered before he died. And I was still so wounded by all I had learned during my recent reading spree that no effort to help seemed too small. I agreed with Simon: the birds must be saved.

When a “Now Hiring, Apply Within” sign appeared in the Pet Palace’s window, the crew decided I was the girl for the job. “Look at her, she’s, like, the dream employee,” said Bear, adjusting the daisy behind her ear.

“Yeah, perfectly groomed, sweet, soft-spoken. With her rosy cheeks, who wouldn’t hire her?” said Ptarmigan, lifting his
animated hands, which compensated for his lifeless legs, into the air.

“Plus, she’s cute as hell,” added Orca, lowering her fedora smoothly.

“What’s your work experience?” asked Simon. When he found out my résumé began and ended with the Shake Shack, where I had whirred blenders through all four years of high school, he manufactured me a new employment history. It listed an array of pet stores—all of them in faraway Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I was supposed to be from.

“Now go in there and get the job,” Simon said with a slight squeeze of my arm that heightened my usual eagerness to please. The crew quivered with excitement, and then, as was our ritual, we gathered in a close circle, piled our hands one on top of another, and recited in unison—“Humans Enforcing Animal Rights Today!”

Azar was friendly. He scanned my application with unconcerned eyes and hired me immediately. “You seem like a very nice girl, Dolores,” he said, calling me by the alias Simon had created. “I have trouble, such trouble, keeping the good people in here.”

The crew had been right about Azar’s inadequacies as a purveyor of pets. (“This is ninth American business I have run,” he told me one afternoon, staring with solemnity into the bearded dragon’s terrarium. “First pet store.”) During my brief tenure at the Palace, I did my best to compensate for his failings and bring the assorted creatures, along with their varied habitats, into optimal condition. After two weeks of hard work, during which I impressed Azar with my skill in handling the animals, who all scurried in terror from his hirsute hands (and during which my left ovary never got a rest, surrounded as I was by so many doe-eyed dependents), it was finally time for the Operation to execute its plan.

Bumble came into the store, posing as a customer. He had
been in several times before, “browsing for a bunny,” he had always said with a saccharine grin.

“Ah! My redheaded friend!” Azar rubbed his palms together. “So good to see you! I have many nice rabbits—er, bunnies?—in now, just came in. Many nice.”

“Wonderful,” Bumble said. “I think I am
finally ready to buy
.” And that was our code, my cue to begin.

Swiftly, I darted toward the wide double doors at the front of the store. “It’s stuffy in here, Azar,” I said. “I’m going to open these for a while.” The day was dazzlingly sunny. The wild birds outside sang siren songs. The sky was beckoning, the branches of the trees welcoming.

Azar ignored me, as I’d thought he would, so busy was he speaking to Bumble in the sultry tones of a seasoned if unsuccessful salesman. “But this one,” he purred, “ahhh, this one, look at these markings, bea
uuu
tiful.” He lifted a rabbit into the air by the scruff of its neck. Its little legs moved helplessly. I tore my eyes away and lurched in a half-walk, half-run toward the birdcages, where dozens of captive chirpers cheered me on. My heart pounded so fast that I, too, felt like a bird—like something nervous and fragile, with fine white bones, and like something expansive and surprising, something that stretched itself open to reveal a sudden and startling beauty.

One by one, I opened the cages. The birds, ten, twenty, thirty of them, emerged in a flurry of orange and cobalt, red and brown. Their wings made a thrilling sound.

Azar let out an uncomprehending cry. He dropped the rabbit into a mound of sawdust.

I was surprised at how readily they shot straight for the opened doors and fluttered up into the blue. They looked so bright, so foreign—like paint strokes of gold and violet and chartreuse—as they flew above the parking lot and into the trees where the common birds waited. I stood by the doors for a moment, mesmerized by their colors in the sun.

Only a few stragglers remained in the store, confusedly hovering and squawking in wonderment. Before Azar had time to open his mouth, Bumble, who I had learned possessed a fondness for high-tech gear, garments, and gadgetry, removed a specially made net with a retractable pole from his backpack. He expertly used the net to catch the lingering birds and release them outside. (He had practiced this technique for weeks with Raven, who had tossed small cat toys into the air for Bumble while she read her favorite magazine,
Billiards USA
.) All the while Bumble shouted at Azar, “You are an abuser and exploiter of animals and a killer of birds! We are friends of animals who watch when no one thinks we are watching, and act when no one expects we will act!”

I was silent, absorbed in trying to coerce a frightened lovebird out from between two bags of dog kibble. He was part of a family of two, a bonded pair, and I had often noticed how they perched side by side and slept huddled together, their breasts pulsing with synchronized beats. The lovebird’s companion had already flown away.

“What is this?” Azar cried.

“We are Operation H.E.A.R.T.!” said Bumble.

“What operation?” Azar didn’t understand. “I am calling the police!” He was purple in the face. I felt sorry for him, and for the lovebird.

Bumble was impressively adept with his net. “Margie!” he called. “They’re all out! Let’s go!”

“Who is Margie?” Azar yelled.

The lovebird could not be persuaded. “Come on, come on,” I pleaded softly. I was dripping with sweat and could feel my throat thickening with tears. “Your friend is already outside,” I said. “Come on!”

“Margie!” Bumble called.

“Please don’t stay here. Don’t be scared. It’s better out there,” I cooed. The lovebird blinked at me. He wouldn’t move. Bumble’s
slick hand clasped mine. He dragged me out of the store. “Run!” he said. I ran, but I left a shard of myself with that lone lovebird who would not leave, and who reminded me of someone.

Bumble and I dove into our waiting getaway car, Simon’s 2002, and Orca gunned the engine. Azar screamed at me from the sidewalk, “You little idiot!” As we drove away, I saw him staring at the sky, slowly turning in circles.

AFTER THAT, I DIDN’T GO HOME
for visits with Dad. I just sent notes, or an essay I’d penned for one of my classes (“Radical and Revolutionary: What the Animal Rights Movement Can Learn From Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
The Devils
”). I spent all my free time with Simon, Annette, and the crew, plotting the next campaign.