by Jesse Reiss
Chapter 19
Neil drove an old Nissan SUV, which Angelina and he headed down the hillside in. Angelina sat silent, staring straight ahead. Neil tried some small talk. “You like birds?”
“I like birds, but I don’t study them like you and your Dad.”
Neil felt the way she gave the response was meant to be offensive. “Well, we don’t particularly study them, but like to watch them as a hobby every now and then. There are so many in the park to see. Better than watching them in a zoo.”
“Right,” she said sarcastically.
“I’m surprised you named the owl ‘Virginia’,” he commented as he rode the brake pedal down the curvy road.
“I didn’t name it. That was already its name.”
“Well, yeah I know, that’s its technical name, but I was surprised you knew that, that’s all.”
“Why? Because I appear stupid compared to you?”
Neil was surprised by the question and shook his head in defense. “No! I didn’t mean that at all. Where the hell did that come from? I just met you — how could I possibly judge your intelligence by knowledge of a name for a bird? I bet you couldn’t find one girl your age who knows the technical name for the Great Horned Owl.”
“I guess you think all girls are stupid?”
He chuckled and laughed. She was boxing him into a corner with each defensive statement he made and rather than get annoyed or upset with her, he was finding it amusing. “Actually, I’m not going to answer that last question because I’ve got a very pretty lady sitting in the car next to me who has the sharpest mind and quickest tongue I’ve heard and she seems to have it in for me.”
That charm melted her arrows and she let out a little smile. There was a minute of silence as they coasted down to Los Feliz Boulevard. They reached the stoplight at the bottom of the hill.
Angelina, feeling bad about her attitude, thought of a question to ask him. “So, why do they call the owl ‘Virginia Anus’?”
He smiled. “Well, if you think about it, the word is meant to sound like some scientific Latin name and possibly it’s named after England’s Virgin Queen or the Virginia colonies, but it’s saying if you look at it, ‘Virgin Asshole’ and I’m sure you can understand what that means.”
“What!? Why would you name a bird that?”
“Ha! Sounds gross don’t it, but that’s nothing. The Swedish botanist in the 1700s who invented the system by which technical names are given to plants and animals today was obsessed with sex and female body parts. So much that he named many different plants after various parts of the female anatomy. Later scientists changed them out of embarrassment, but many still exist. I don’t know if the owl’s name is one of these, but it sure sounds like it.”
“That’s gross!”
“Sure, but think about it. With literally millions of plants and animals to give names to, they start to run out of variations of the alphabet and whose paying attention anyway? Its just some sexually perverted old men hanging out in the lab and having a little fun.”
Neil heard Angelina’s gentle laugh for the first time. “I don’t know if I’d call that fun.”
It took twenty minutes for them to get to the sanctuary and by that time Neil had gotten Angelina warmed up to where she was starting to tell him a little about herself. She couldn’t get over the idea however that his interest in her was merely a curiosity, like an older man might be interested in talking to a cute and naive little girl.
They entered the small building and were met in the lobby by a receptionist surrounded with random notes, odd folders and empty coffee cups. The sounds and smells of a hundred squeaking, whistling and chirping animals filled the air. It was like walking into a third world pet shop disguised as a hospital. The place was small and sparsely furnished with no attempt made to impress anyone with interior decorating. Their clients lived in holes in caves, gutters or trees and couldn’t care less.
They explained they were there to see the owl that was brought over from the LA Zoo hospital that morning. After waiting for a few minutes they were approached by a young volunteer in a dark green army T-shirt whose face was ravished by acne. “Hey, I’m Ken,” he said, introducing himself. They shook his hand nervously. “I’m a volunteer here. You’re the one that found the owl in the park yesterday?”
“Yes,” Angelina answered.
“Did the rucksack that the owl came in belong to you as well?”
She hesitated for a moment, wondering how far his questions would go and how much of the truth she would be forced to say. “Yes,” she answered hesitantly.
He looked at her suspiciously. “Okay, there was something else found in it and I want to verify it is yours before I give it back to you.”
Angelina’s heart sped up and she took a deep breath, wondering what on Earth could have been in Thomas’ rucksack. She tossed out a wild guess. “Don’t tell me, I left some gold coins in there?”
“Yeah! I guess they are yours. Can you tell me the dates on them?” he asked her with a challenging smile.
“Not the exact dates, but they are from the early 1800s.”
“That’s good enough. Are they real?” he asked seriously.
“Of course not, but I’d like them back. My mother works with coins and did some recreations for a Hollywood picture from that time period and I got to keep them after the film shoot was over.”
Neil and Ken nodded their heads, impressed. Angelina smiled, impressed with herself for being able to create a believable lie so easily.
Ken went back behind the reception desk and pulled out the rucksack from beneath it and handed it to her. She looked inside and saw there were near a dozen small gold coins sitting on the bottom. Andy, she decided, was dead meat.
They went through a side door and were met by rows and rows of cages filled with various songbirds and raptors. As they walked down the rows, Angelina looked in every cage at each animal. Some had missing eyes, some bare patches of missing feathers or entire wings missing and some hopped around on only one foot. Some looked normal. One thing many had in common was they were making a ruckus.
“These are where the birds go to recuperate from their injuries. We get all sorts of birds brought to us; mostly young ones that were found after they fell from their nests or got caught by a cat or some other animal and managed to escape. We have other small animals as well, but mostly birds”
“Wow!” Neil said, stopping to look at a young falcon with one deep red eye.
“Your owl is in this cage here.” They stepped over to the cage and looked in.
Virginia’s cage was approximately five times her size. She was standing on a perch in the back with her eye’s closed.
“Holy Cow! That is one big owl!” Neil exclaimed. He admired her beautiful mosaic pattern of brown, grey and white feathers down her front. Her strong yellow talons were covered in tiny feathers, making them appear like they were covered in fur and larger than a normal bird’s talons. Her left wing was fully covered in white bandages that were tied around her body, making it impossible for her to move the wing.
Virginia opened one eye and then the other. She turned her head, looking at each person staring into the cage, one at a time.
“She’s sedated right now and we’ll probably keep her that way for as long as she is here. Otherwise this kind of owl can be aggressive.”
“This owl is notaggressive, let me assure you,” Angelina corrected him.
“Oh, no? Well, I heard they removed human skin and flesh from this very owl’s talons last night as it had attacked someone! First time I’ve ever heard of an owl attacking a human!”
“This owl was saving my life from a someone better described as a monster more than a human being!” Angelina said in sharp defense.
“Saved your life?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes! You heard me right.”
Neil’s eyes went wide in surprise at this datum. In her defense he piped in, “Hey, we’ve heard of dolphins and dogs saving peo
ple’s lives, so why not an owl?”
“Well, are you sure it wasn’t what scratched you?” he asked, pointing to the scratches on her arms and face.
“Does it look like skin and flesh were removed from my arms and face?” she asked, putting her face a few inches from his and then pulling back at the close up sight of his blotchy, scar pitted face.
He saw she was right. “No, it doesn’t. The police came and took specimens back to their forensic lab so they’ll be able to identify who or what this bird clawed. Sounds and looks like you’ve been through a rough time.”
Angelina and Neil nodded in agreement.
“I don’t mean to give you bad news,” he calmly went on, “but it’s a shame they’ll probably order this bird euthanized.”
“What?!”
“Well, it attacked a human being, as you say. I doubt it’ll ever fly again. The left wing is too badly damaged. It was barely saved from having to be amputated, you know. Usually if there was some chance of it recovering and going back to the wild we would rehabilitate and let the bird recover fully and release it back to where it came from. I doubt they’ll let this happen to this one. Once an animal has attacked a human — no matter the animal — they always put it to sleep.”
Angelina was distressed at the news. “When would this happen?”
“Oh, hard to say,” he said calmly. “Not until the police have completed their investigation and gotten the information they need from the DNA and such. Probably then we would get the order.”
The bird was watching Angelina and Ken’s exchange, moving its head slightly from one to the next as they spoke. Neil watched this and frowned. It seemed to him the animal understood what they were saying.
“Look Ken, you’ve got to understand something. This isn’t some average bird. And it isn’t going to be put to sleep! You’ve got to help me make sure of that.”
“Not that easy you know. I don’t set the rules around here. We get an order from the authorities and it gets done. Not much I can do about it.”
Angelina reached into the burlap sack and pulled out a gold coin. “This coin is worth a lot of money. You can buy a lot of video games with the money from this coin.”
“I thought you said it was a fake.”
“The coin maybe, but the gold is real. The gold alone would fetch a thousand dollars or more. I’m going to give you this and you promise me you’ll watch out for this bird and call me if anything changes regarding it, okay?”
He wasn’t sure why he was being bribed so strongly. He looked around to confirm they were alone. He thought over the scenario and considered that there was nothing illegal she was asking him to do and even if the coin was a fake, he really had nothing to lose.
“Sure,” he said curiously, inspecting her like she didn’t have all her marbles. He took the coin and looked at it closely.
“And if the bird stays alive, I’ll give you one more.”
He was nodding, most likely thinking about the Xbox games he was going to buy with the money, she thought.
They exchanged cell phone numbers and Ken promised again he would keep an eye on the bird for them.
As they left the place and walked to their car, Neil, who had been mostly quiet up to that point, spoke up.
“That was kind of strange, if I may say so.”
“Yeah. Welcome to my world. Everything is strange.”
“No, I mean, watching that bird, I could swear it understood what you and that guy were saying.”
“Of course it did. That’s why we can’t let them kill it.”
“So you knew the bird understood you.”
“Yeah. By the way, please don’t tell my mom or anyone about these gold coins, okay?”
“Why? Did you steal them or something?”
“NO! I did not steal them. I don’t steal.” She took a long breath and sighed. “It’s a really crazy story. Look, my mom is actually a jeweler. She doesn’t work for some Hollywood production. I made that up so the guy would believe me that they were fakes.”
“So the coins are real then?”
“Yeah, they probably are,” Angelina sighed again. They got into the car and Neil started the engine.
“Great. If they’re from the 1800s, they must be worth thousands or millions.”
“What do you think we are doing at your house in the first place? What do you think that owl was saving me from? There are guys out there who are trying to get their hands on these coins — well, one particular coin — and supposedly it is worth several million dollars.”
“And you just happened to forget that you left these lying in the bottom of a bag?”
“Just drive please. It is very confusing. Just know one thing: I am not a criminal and I didn’t steal these coins. Can you believe me on that?”
He put the SUV in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. “Sure. Well, at least I know you didn’t steal anything from my room.”
“What do you mean?”
“You went into my room this morning and looked around, didn’t you?”
Angelina shook her head in disbelief and embarrassment. “Yeah, but how did you know?”
“My computer camera records all things that go on in the room when I’m not there — like a home security device. When I came back this morning, it prompted me that there was someone there and played back the video of you looking around the room.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I confess. Yes, I looked around your room. Was interesting, actually.”
“You can borrow that Pillars of the Earth book if you’d like. Excellent read.”
“Thanks. I might take you up on it.”
“Sure.”
“So, can you explain to me what ‘S-E-T-I’ is?
He laughed. “I saw you reading that on my computer screen! It’s the ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ — a computer program that runs from the Internet on my computer whenever it isn’t in use. I’m like lending my computer processing power to a space research company that is conducting a massive search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thousands are donating their computer processing power to it, all in the effort to sort through radio waves picked up from space and looking for evidence of some being broadcast from an alien planet.”
“Radio waves from an alien planet? Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Like the TV and radio waves from Earth are right now traveling out into space where they could be picked up by distant planets, the idea is there might be other civilizations on planets similar to Earth out there that are transmitting their own radio waves and so there are radio telescopes here searching for them.”
“Have they found anything yet?”
“Not that we know of.”
Angelina’s phone rang. It was her mom checking on her. She asked them to stop at a grocery store and listed to Angelina things to get as they would be cooking dinner that evening and told her to not let Neil pay for them.
They did as told, stopping at Whole Foods. As they walked the aisles, Angelina told him about what it was like to go to school at Immaculate Heart and her likes and dislikes in music. There they found some common ground. They arrived home with a large shopping bag and Paula and Angelina went to work in the kitchen.
