I’m carrying Rory in his cage around the Collooney graveyard.  He’s squawking, green and yellow wings flapping like crazy.  Davy’s providing cover, both hands making a pistol, there’s no trees for sticks in the graveyard, in case we get ambushed by the Germans.  We almost finish one patrol, Davy racing from one mossy-grey Celtic cross to another, before Da’s roaring and waving at us from below in the car park to come back or we’ll get left behind.  He always says crazy things that you know he’d never do but somehow, they still make you scared.

The minute we’re all door slammed into the car, Da’s head is shaking:

“Sure, that bird’s a bleddy ould age pensioner … ohhhhh,” his head does an awful heap of shaking over and back.  “I knew that fella with the pet shop in the back of his filling station was a pure crook.  Sure, he saw poor ould Auntie comin’ a mile off!”

After it turned out the Rory wouldn’t talk, not even with a real-pretend gun pointed at his head, Da bought two budgies from the pet shop on Capel Street in Dublin when he was up for some court case. 

Dublin’s kinda like the North, the roads are still fierce bad, but you can get nearly everything good there, plus they have television from England which is way better than RTE.  English telly starts in the morning when you’re eating your cornflakes and at night they have all new episodes of the American detective programmes.  RTE doesn’t start until four o’clock with Sesame Street and stupid wee wans’ cartoons that nothing bad happens in; then it’s all News, the Angelus and fellas selling cattle.  We do get Rockford, so I suppose RTE is not completely rotten.  

The onliest problem with English telly is that everyone has English accents, of course, and they’re always blaming us for the Troubles up the North, when it’s Paisley and the British Army that’re causing all the killing.  But the really good thing about the BBC is that there’s no ads to be interrupting Rockford right at the minute when he’s about the grab the bad fellas. 

It was with the Dublin budgies, who we never tried to teach to talk, nor even gave them names, and definitely never pointed a gun at, that Da started the breeding.

He just puts two budgies in the same cage; in the beginning they just seem to hop over and back from perch to perch; flapping their wings if you make a sudden movement.  Nothing ever seems to happen between them.  Then one day the hen budgie pushes herself through the tiny hole in what Da calls the “nesting box” and lays four or five eggs.  Da had to send off to England for the nesting boxes.  Even the Dublin pet shops, there’s only two of them, don’t have weird things like nesting boxes.  The pet shop man whose one of them the-tide’s-gone-way-out-bald fellas, but with heaps of hair coming down his nose and out his ears, wouldn’t budge on ordering nesting boxes all the way from England.

“Ahhh no, no, no, we doant have an account wid dem crouwd,” he said, shaking his head, but his eyes never stop moving.  “No, de boss’d never allow dat, we’d hafta sent over a cheque, an’ den d’English fella’d hafta make sure de cheque wuz gud an’ ….”

“Awright so,” Da snaps, turning and walking out, waving me and Davey behind him, and the pet shop fella still rattling on, his eyes darting around.

Pet shops are weird-interesting places; full of the sounds of strange-colourful-wild-eyed birds whistle-squawking, hamster wheels squeaking and the musty smells of something rotting.  In a pet shop, with Da above at the counter grilling the pet shop man about how to breed birds, you could be fierce bored-staring into what looks like an empty cage and suddenly some little lumpy little thing scurries along half covered by sawdust, scaring the living shite outta ya. 

First of all, Da built his own nesting box outta plywood, but something was wrong with it cause the budgies would kill their babies inside it, within in the darkness.  After that, he sent off to England for a real nesting box.  He had to get a Postal Order from the Post Office cause he doesn’t go near banks.  With the English nesting boxes you can slide up the end wooden wall and behind it is a piece of glass that lets you see how many eggs the budgie laid. 

After the eggs hatch, Da’s all nervous-happy.  Snapping at us not to scare the budgies, he lets us stand on a chair to stare into the nesting box through the piece of glass.  All you can see are disgusting bald-pink-flabby-skinned chicks opening their tiny beaks to make the blackest hole ever seen.  After a while they stop being so disgusting, grow feathers, come out of the nesting boxes, and start hopping from perch to perch like their parents.

What’s even more disgusting than the chicks’ bald-pinkness is that the mammy budgie feeds them by vomiting up her own food into their mouths.  When I seen that, my mouth filled with twisty-turny-road puke water.

It turned out breeding budgies is easier than making them talk, cause in just one year Da had rakes of chicks bopping from perch to perch inside the cages.  That’s when he sold some of the chicks, so he could go up to Molloy’s and buy plywood, wire, nails, glue, everything to build all the big-long cages within in the garage.  Then he bought more budgies up in Dublin for breeding.  Soon we had so many budgie chicks that other people’s ma’s and da’s started coming from all around to buy them.  Da had to ask the shoe shops up town for shoe boxes for when people came to buy but didn’t bring a cage.

Having all these birds around, Da decided to build and aviary which is kinda like either a huge cage that people can stand up in or a special shed that birds live in with walls made outta wire fencing.  Ours is stuck between the wall of our house and the wall that keeps us outta the Lees’ yard, so we only need two wire fencing walls.

After he had so many budgies and selling so many of their chicks, Da started getting canaries and breeding them.  It’s funny that you breed budgies for their colours and canaries for their singing and you can never tell ahead of time which ones will come out which way.

The budgies and canaries fly around in the aviary in sorta-half-circles, fluttering down onto the branches Da tied up as perches.  No one thought of this, but cats do come and sit in our backyard staring at the colourful birds trapped in the aviary just a few feet away from them; probly imagining they could ate them for dinner.  Every now and again a cat will make a dart at the wire fence wall, climbing up it with their razor-sharp claws.  The budgies and canaries go berserk with the cat hanging off the wire-wall.  The screeching and squawking is so bad you’d think they were already getting ripped apart by the cat’s teeth.  One time a mustardy ould canary got so scared it dropped dead.

That made Da fierce mad.

If we ever see cats, we’re told to scare them away, which is fine with me.  Cats is odd, how they do stare at you, like they know exactly how you’re thinking. 

After the ould canary died, Da went up to Molloy’s hardware and they had to send off to England for twine netting that took weeks to come.  Da tied the netting to the roof of the aviary and weighed it down to the ground with stones.  That way it’s hanging a few inches away from the aviary’s wire-cage-wall so if cats run up to it, they get all tangled in the netting and can’t hang off the cage-wall frightening ould canaries to death.

That worked to keep the cats far enough back to not frighten the birds, but then one day a hawk flew by and all the bright colours of the canaries and budgies bopping from perch to perch got his attention. Probly got him thinking: ‘Jaysys, there’s me dinner!’  

The hawk stood on top of the post at the end of Lee’s backyard that holds up their clothes’ line.  He stayed staring at the aviary for a long time.  I thought the hawk might be so strong he could crash with his sharp beak through the cage-wall. 

“Not atallatallatall, he’s just blinded be all the bright colours an’ the notion of an easy meal,” Da said, “he probly can’t see the cage-walls or nettin’ from down t’end a Lees’ garden.  He’ll realize he’s mistake an’ clear off.”

But he didn’t clear off.

He kept coming back. 

Sitting on the post in the Lee’s yard: Staring, staring, staring.  

All the time staring at the aviary with them hawk-eyes!

Da borrowed a shotgun from his friend Mick the Gard, who’s always shooting and fishing.  Wan time Da went to the back door, raised the shotgun up to his shoulder, aiming it at the hawk down on the post in Lees’ yard.  I was for sure he’d shoot, so I jammed my fingers in my ears like I see Belfast ma’s doing on the News and them out doing the shopping when they get caught in a ‘RA ambush on the British Army.

He lowered the gun and I said, too loud cause the fingers were still in me ears:

“Go on shoot, it’s goanta kill the budgies!”

“Too bleddy dangerous,” he said, gritting his teeth, twist-nodding his head.  “Ah, some ould biddy back the road’d phone t’barrack an’ t’Super’d want to know who in t’hell was dischargin’ a firearm within in town.”

He broke the shotgun in half over his knee, the reddish-orange cartridge flying up to exactly where he held his hand.

The hawk was winning!

A few days later, we were kneeling down saying the Angelus with the tea, Batchelors beans on toast, still cooking in the scullery, when we heard the budgies squawking sumptin ferocious.

Da jumps up offa his knees, me beside him, and races for the back door, his slippers slapping of the kitchen tiles.  All in one go, he grabs the shotgun from just inside the back door, breaks it in two, fishes in his baggy trousers’ pocket for a second, pulles out an orangish-red cartridge and slots it perfectly down into the barrel of the shotgun.

I stare at Da’s eyes as they narrow to slits. He clicks the shotgun closed and slides off the safety nib.

I’m full sure today’s the day I’m going to see sumptin shot!

He rips open the back door, jamming the shotgun hard against his shoulder like he’s a cowboy sheriff bursting outta the JAIL into a dusty street to blast away the bank robbers.

On the ground up against the aviary, the hawk is tangled up in the English netting.  Most of the wild shriek-panic is the hawk himself on his back, near scared to death,  curved-sharp claws grabbing like crazy at nuthin; wings whack-slapping against the dirt; whiteish-brown-flecked belly twisting over-n’-back-over-n’-back; tiny black eyes wild with the fear of death.

Da aims the shotgun right at the hawk.

Expecting a Belfast-bang, I jam my fingers in my ears.

Da stands there, the tip of the shotgun barrel moving just slightly and I’m thinking how could he miss from here?  The shotgun pellets will blast the hawk into pieces.  I better stand back knowing it’ll make a fierce amount of blood, meat and feathers.

I only take a half-step back cause getting splashed with blood is worth seeing the gun get shot.

But Da never shoots.

Instead, he breaks the shotgun over his knee; the barrel dangling useless; the orangish-red cartridge looping up outta the black hole of the empty barrel and into his perfectly placed palm.  He slides the cartridge into his trousers pocket and without looking hands me the empty shotgun.

I often handled Da’s pistol, always unloaded, and even cleaned the barrack’s Uzi a couple of times at our kitchen table, where it was definite it wouldn’t be shot. 

For just a second, I pretend I’m holding the gun that’ll kill the hawk who’s trying to ate our birds; but disappointment immediately wipes out my pretending.  

Da’s not letting me shoot; no one’s shooting. 

Instead, he’s foostering around with the English netting. 

The hawk is a ball of anger and scaredness.  His curved claws, sharp as blades, slash at Da’s hands.  Da stoops over the whole mess, face reddening, hands getting scratched, lips puffing out breaths as he tugs and tears at the netting – driving the hawk even crazier.

The weight of the shotgun draped across my arm feels good.  But it’s empty;  just a lump of metal and wood.  If I could get the orangish-red cartridge from Da’s pocket, then I could turn it into an actual weapon. 

I’m never allowed to hold a real weapon.

The budgies and canaries are pure mad fluttering and squawking; the hawk is screeching, flapping and clawing; Da’s huffing and puffing.

I could stop all this terribleness if only I had that little orangish-red cartridge.

“Stan’ back, stan’ back,” Da snaps, as if I’m the problem here.

Still the hawks looks sorta luvly up close.  You can tell by how it moves on its back that it’s all muscles and bone; fit and strong, ready to kill with them razor claws and hooked beak.

Da turns, runs back in the house but before I can even close the shotgun, jam it into my shoulder and pretend to cover the hawk, he’s back with the breadknife, slashing at the English netting.

He slash-slash-slashes until the hawk is able to get upright and try flying away, except that one claw is still snagged in the netting. 

The hawk is flapping like mad a few feet in the air, but not able to get away.  Da makes a wild slash with the breadknife.  It seems like half the netting goes off with the hawk. 

Its wings whoop-whoop-whoop.

The hawk, with a heap of netting hanging from is claws, gets higher and higher into the sky.  The netting drapes down like a bit a wooly rope until halfway down the backyard it slips off the hawk’s claw and falls on top of where Da planted potatoes. 

The hawk’s wing-flapping slows down and evens out.  He strong flaps a few times, suddenly kinda-sorta shiver-twisting in the air, shaking every feather on his body.  Then the strong-slow flapping comes back, and he disappears over the trees, out of sight, leaving me confused standing with a unloaded gun.

Immediately, the birds in the aviary calm down.

Da’s hand shoots out for the shotgun: His eyebrows clench down over his pale blue eyes as his glare silences the complaining coming up outta my throat about the gun not getting shot.