MONDAY: HOW MY GEORGE FOUND LOVE

’I had to give him the chance to leave me’

ordinary pistons, then stretching his wings behind him and downwards; it was if he were breaking out of his physical restraints.

If he could balance so he didn’t fall over, he’d look quite dignified, like a little man getting ready for a night out in his dinner jacket and white shirt.

Most of the time he levered himself around, squatting on his heels, waddling; he still couldn’t walk yet. What looked like his knees pointed backwards, but those were his heels, since his knees were really the bones up at the top of what appeared to be his thigh.

I wondered if he had a birth defect when I noticed his ear openings were different heights and sizes. Only later, reading up about owls, did I realise this was to aid his hearing and to help pinpoint prey.

He seemed to enjoy affection too, although for him it wasn’t real affection, it was just the need for food and warmth.

But if he was out of the cage he wanted to be close to me; my lap was his favourite place. George had also become quite accustomed to Snickers licking his beak like a lollipop; he let her do it, and that way she kept him from going crusty with mince juice.

He was also happy just sitting in my hand as I moved around doing one- handed chores; cooking, tidying up, whatever I could do one-handed.

Sometimes I held him in one hand while I painted with the other, and he’d watch my face, or my paintbrush as it moved, and I was captivated. Of course, I realised that everything took twice as long to do with a magpie hanging off me, but I also knew this would never happen again in my life and I wanted to make the most of every minute. Stretching is a big thing with young birds; they test their legs and wings to the extreme, as if checking everything works for their maiden flight.

George fell off the kitchen table quite a lot. I couldn’t tell if this was an intentional effort at flying, but his little chin would hit the ground and he’d be in a heap.

I wondered if I could pick him up and throw him gently into the air — how else could I teach him to fly? Then it occurred to me that mother birds can’t teach their offspring to fly either.

They have to get airborne on their own.

He had been a wild bird in the beginning, so could he be a wild bird again? The knowledge that he could fly off and simply be shot pained me. The dilemma of whether I should aim to let him go was emotionally taxing.

I was astonished at the affection I felt for this black-and-white bundle. Time and again I came back to the obvious answer; the bird will decide.

And then, exactly two weeks after I first found him, George flew. It was not a long flight, from my shoulder to the kitchen island, but he didn’t falter on his takeoff or stumble on his landing.

True, it was inelegant, but soon he was using me as a launchpad. He took to landing on my head, which was very uncomfortable. His talons were forever getting tangled in my hair.

He pecked everything: the cushions, the sofa, pens, notebooks, newspapers; were they edible? Did they break? Did they taste of anything? He pecked Mouse in her basket by the Rayburn. One morning as I was reading the newspapers on the kitchen sofa, he unpicked my shoelaces.

He had a new game; he spun around on the kitchen table, around and around and around, until he was literally staggering, just as I did when I was a child and discovered that I could make myself dizzy and fall over by spinning around on the spot.

There seemed to be no reason for it but play. Despite his new ability to fly, George spent an awful lot of time on the ground.

He raced around the floor after Widget, pounding the boards with both feet together, leaping in a weird two-footed manner — jumping, really — while using his wings to balance. Occasionally he’d stop to scratch his head by lowering the wing on the relevant side and bringing his foot up over it; it looked bizarre.

Each day he flew higher and was soon perching on the tops of doors. After five weeks, I knew I had to give him the chance, at least, to go outside — and to leave me, if he wanted to.

I opened the kitchen window. He considered it for a while, and then flew out — coming straight back in to land on the arm of the sofa, as if reassuring himself that his ‘nest’ was still available.

Then he left again, leaping out of the window and soaring in an arch into the sky.

My heart was pounding, with a thudding noise in my ears as if the sound was being carried into my bloodstream. In a way that I had not anticipated, I felt bereft. It began to rain.