Carry On Wayward Bird

When I moved in with my wife several years ago, I gained another roommate in her pet bird. A cockatiel named Norton. We've always had a relationship that hovers somewhere between strained coexistence to furious hatred. He's made many kamikaze style dive attempts at my head and I expect he'll be successful one day. He's also charged at me running across the floor, beak out and open for the kill, trying to chase me away from his cage area. Which is a funny sight in itself considering I'm almost 6'3" and he's almost 5" on his tiptoes. But he's been hatching other plots to kill me. I can see it in his eyes.

But I think we may have found some common ground recently. There is a new car commercial, I don't remember for what company, that features the old Kansas classic song Dust In The Wind. When the commercial starts and you hear the first opening notes and lyrics, "I clooooose myyyyy eyyyyyyeees, only for a moment, and the moment's gone...." (Betchya' won't be getting that out of your head the rest of the day now.), Norton right away starts squawking really loud and gets really anxious. By the time the song really gets going he starts flapping around like crazy, still squawking like mad, and then flies into the bedroom and screams from in there until the commercial is over. And you can tell he is just screaming over and over in his own language, "MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE, KILL ME NOW!". You can tell he's gone into what I call Crappy Music Convulsions, or CMV.

After the commercial is finally done he flies back to his cage, visibly shaken by the experience. It takes him a few minutes to get over the whole thing, and I swear sometimes you can almost see him panting and his little chest beating really fast, he's so wound up. Very traumatic. Poor guy doesn't even have fingers to plug his ears with. I'm sure you can feel his pain. I sure do. I'm sure that's one of the songs used by the CIA when they're torturing terrorist suspects. That's gotta be against the Geneva Convention.

We might not get along that well, Norton and I, but we'll always have our hatred of crappy 70s arena-rock bands that make us want to kill ourselves when they are played. I feel so much closer to him now. Who knew he had good taste in music? Hell, who knew he had any taste in music?

I wonder what would happen if I put on Boston's More Than A Feeling? Probably shouldn't risk that one. Poor guy's liable to have a stroke.