Jake is an African Grey parrot.
Pixabay
He was owned by a musician who became a friend of mine. James Fontana came to life when he cuddled his violin under his chin, held it to his shoulder and caressed those strings.
He could stir the blood and rouse the Spanish dancer into a skirt swirling foot stamping dervish as he sent his bow bearing arm flying into activity.
On the other hand he could have me weeping with the soulful tragedy that he could describe with his bow hovering on a high note like a kingfisher hovering over a pool. Then he would cut the note and descend into a soothing swooping of notes to calm the troubled soul.
King Saul in his darkest hours called the young man, once the shepherd boy David, to play the lute/lyre to soothe his tortured spirit.
Music is a powerful medium that speaks without doubt to every living creature. Sometimes it is the symphony of nature. Sometimes the sounds that man makes on many instruments to excite or calm the human, animal or bird.
Jake lived happily with James. The parrot spoke in a guttural funny accent and whenever he heard his master’s voice he would begin a dance to tempt James to open the door of his airy cage and put out a hand to bring Jake up to the lofty perch of his shoulder. They muddled together very happily, man and bird for years.
Tragically, towards the end of last year James suffered a heart attack and after a short stay in hospital came home to die. We mourned his loss and Jake did too, more than any of us knew.
His sister came to fetch the bird with his cage, toys and food but he did not prosper even though Milly took time to talk to him daily and even learned to put her hand into the cage to try to tempt him out.
Jake sat in a bundle of feathers that looked like wet washing waiting to be hung out on the line. She phoned me and together we would have tea near his open cage but nothing we did or said raised his head from the nest of his shoulders.
We despaired when eventually he began plucking his own feathers. The vet couldn’t help. The parrot was in deep depression.
One day, a short while before Christmas, I popped into Milly’s quite excited because I’d found a CD that I had forgotten about. It was a recording of James playing the lead violin while we sang in the choir…….. part of the Hallelujah chorus we had sung the previous Easter.
We popped it into her neglected CD player and as the sweet plaintive sounds of
“For unto us a child is bo…orn………..unto us a son is gi……ven”
we had tears in our eyes remembering that this was James’s last concert.
A sudden fluthering of feathers drew our attention to Jake in his cage. He wobbled along the wooden perch to the open door. Before our ASTONISHED eyes he put out a gnarly grey clawed foot. Tentatively I put my hand in his way and he stepped onto my finger and clasped it with surprising strength. With awe I brought him out.
He raised himself up out of the bundle of wet washing he had seemed to be and literally shook off his dark mood.
As the music soared and the violin spoke of love and pain and joy, that bird came to life before our eyes. His tattered feathers shivered into place as he stretched and swayed from one foot to the other. He closed his grey, crepe eyelids in ecstasy as he danced from one foot to the other. He began making deep noises in his body and then he let the sound come out. It sounded like the release of a tortured soul.
He had found relief in the sound of his master’s violin. We realised that he had been starving himself physically for want of the comfort and longing for not only his friend James but the incredible connection they had had through hours and hours of music that had filled the home.
Relieved and excited she took James’s collection of CD’s and from that day on, made a point of always having music playing in her home.
Jake made a full recovery. When astonished friends asked what the remedy was for his new life, Milly gave a one word answer………
MUSIC