There are all kinds of cages...

Kookaburras

For the past couple of years, while I've been unemployed, I've had my own personal reasons to go out walking quite a lot. Often, especially during the spring and summer months, my walks would take me to a local park, where there's a small aviary and an even smaller menagerie.

A couple of years ago, there was a new addition to the aviary in the form of a pair of kookaburras. I suppose they might have been described as a mating pair, though I'm not sure if kookaburras will breed in our climate; even if they didn't, they were still inseparable as a pair. Most of the time when they appeared in the open, they'd be together; when they weren't, it wasn't for long because as soon as the one who was outside started its song, it wasn't too long before the other would pop out through the little door from the enclosed area at the back of the aviary cage.

The sound of their song was lovely, and as I spent more time near them I discovered that their song varied at different times of day. It seemed that they had one form of their song for the morning, and another for the evening. Both were so beautifully musical, that I recorded both of their songs on my telephone, and on later visits, if there was no sign of either bird, I'd play them back. If I played the wrong song for that time of day, there'd be no effect, but if I remembered to play back the correct one, first one bird, then the other would emerge from their shelter, flock to where I stood at the front of the aviary, and sing along.

Then last summer there came a time when only one of the kookaburras would emerge. At first I thought that one of them had gone, but then one day I arrived to find them both out in the open, They were now in adjacent, though separate enclosures. I saw the attendant and asked why they'd been separated and he told me that the female had become ill, and they were being kept in separate cages in case whatever she had was contagious.

For the next couple of weeks, whenever they were both out in the open, the female would sit quietly on a branch near the fencing that separated their two cages, and the male would be clinging onto the same fencing as close as he could possibly get to his mate. Often he'd be singing his heart out, but rarely got any response from the female.

Then one day in August, there were no kookaburras in sight. I played their evening song, and almost immediately the male emerged into the open, though it seemed with more urgency than ever before. He ignored me and went straight to his place on the cage fencing and began singing his heart out, but with no result. The next day, the attendant told me that the female kookaburra had died a few days previously.

I often played their songs to myself after that, but I thought it would be cruel to play them at the aviary again. Around October last year, my own personal circumstances changed: the details are still too painful for me to relate, but suffice to say that I had no reason to spend time walking in the park again. Then in early January this year, just after the snow had cleared, I paid a visit to the aviary again. The little kookaburra was still there, and after all these months he still clung to his chosen place on the cage fencing, singing for his mate. His song didn't seem quite the same though, it seemed more subdued, as though his little heart wasn't in it. He seemed to know that his mate was gone, but his affection for her wouldn't let him just give up. There had been cages separating them before, and to him, it must have seemed that death was just another cage keeping them apart.

Of course, not all cages are made up of bars or fences. Distance can be just as restrictive as any cage. It may seem silly to say so, but I felt a kind of empathy with that little bird. Though I was free to come and go as I please, I was still in my own cage, kept away from where I wanted to be & from who I wanted to be with by distance in the same way that the kookaburras were separated by physical cages.

But even cages, those of bars or those of distance are not enough to keep lovers apart, until something happens that separates them permanently, and then the parting becomes more real; then, just like the kookaburra where he is, I have my memories to dwell upon within my own cage. He puts everything into singing to bring back his mate, even though he probably knows the futility of it; love is like that, and though it may also be futile for me, I too, still dream and hope that one day I can overcome the restrictions of my own cage.