"LEAVE THAT BIRD ALONE!"
By; Gerald A. Polley
I've had a little bird pestering me at work. The cook shut him
in the dumpster and now a couple of times each morning he'll buzz
me when I go out to the dumpster. I distract him by throwing a
few crusts of bread over the fence, then him and his friends get
busy picking those apart and stay away from the dumpster. But it
brought back something that happened many years ago. It was the
first year I was working with some staunch environmentalists.
They belonged to everything; Save The Rain Forest, The Sierra
Club, a gentleman even visited them from California who was
trying to save the condors! We started out pretty good. Then all
of a sudden the very excellent cook we had disappeared. We didn't
find out until later he'd taken off with somebody's daughter.
Anyway, the manager called a friend of his in New York, or New
Jersey, or someplace, and the guy threw whatever he had in his
car and came up to Maine. He seemed like a pretty nice guy and we
worked well together for three days. Then some little birds got
in the restaurant.
The boss called some people with the Audibon that went around to
places and netted little invaders and got them back outside. We
were waiting for them to come when the cook said "Oh,
there's an easier way of getting rid of them!" He picked up
a can of oven spray and headed for one of the birds that was on a
shelf in the corner and tried to spray it. The bird took off
shrieking.
"Hey! Stop that!" I cried. "Leave them
alone!"
"Mind your own business!" the cook snapped. "I'm
just having some fun. Shut up!" The boss' wife didn't say
anything but hurried upstairs to their living quarters. The cook
went after another bird. He was just about to spray it when I
grabbed the oven cleaner out of his hand.
"That's enough!" I said. "What's the matter with
you? Leave them alone! The people will come in and remove them
without harming them."
"Get out of my face!" the cook screamed. "Give me
that! You never take anything from me! Who in the hell do you
think you are? You're not my boss! Calm down! I'm just having
some fun. Mind your own business!"
It was then that the boss came charging down the stairs.
"You!" he screamed, pointing to the cook, "Get out
of here! You're done! I won't have a sadistic animal like you
working for me. Get out!"
"What's the matter with you lunatics?" the cook
screamed. "They're just f****** birds! They're nothing! What
are you so upset about? They're just stupid birds! Thousands of
them die every day."
"Get out!" the boss screamed. "I came all the way
up here," the cook screamed, "I spent money to get
here. Now you expect me to go home with nothing?"
The boss softened a little. "I'll give you $500," he
answered, "to cover your expenses. There's other places in
town that need cooks. But I can't have you working for me. You're
just not my kind of person."
The cook too, calmed down a little. "Well, thanks," he
muttered. " I still don't understand. But obviously we won't
get along, especially with him here!" He glared at me and
went back to the office with the boss to get a check, and the
boss took over cooking.
When the manager came in he came up to me and said "Gerald,
in the future mind your own business." "Whoa!" I
told him, "You might not be bothered by something as
sadistic as that guy, but I am. You got any problems go to the
boss. You know that's my rule. Otherwise than that don't worry
about it." The manager walked off in a huff and we barely
spoke for the rest of the year.
The next year when I signed on again the boss said "Oh, you
won't have to worry about Jeff this year. He asked if you'd be
working, I said yes, and he said he wouldn't be. I don't think
we've lost that much!"
The manager's replacement was a woman. She was the type that gave
blondes a bad name, but that's another story. As I have said
before, sometimes my relationship with cooks has been very short.
I don't even remember this guy's name! Perhaps that's a good
thing!
THE END