One Bird's Choice Read Online Free PDF Page B

news. “Oh, Iain, we’re just so pleased,” she said. “The last guinea fowl has finally settled on his new family. He’s not alone anymore.”
    It took me a second or two to metabolize her statement. “Oh, right, that’s great,” I said. “So did he settle on the chickens or the ducks?”
    “Oh, heavens no,” Mom replied, brimming with parental pride. “Neither. He picked us, your dad and me. Lucius could have just wandered off, but he chose us. It’s so cute, and he’s getting so tame now.”
    “Lucius?”
    “Oh, sure, Lucius. He needed a name, so that’s what we’ve been calling him. Great, eh?”
    I concurred and offered my congratulations. When Mom said goodbye and hung up, I stood with the phone dangling in my hand, staring at the wall in my apartment. What exactly was I going home to? I wasn’t sure I was ready to accept a new, unfamiliar family member — namely an adopted avian brother named Lucius.
    I find Mom sitting on the wooden stoop, breaking off little bits of fresh raisin bread (that I didn’t know we had) and tossing them at Lucius’s feet. He’s happily hopping back and forth, pecking them up at a stunning rate. “Good boy,” she’s saying. “You love breakfast, don’t you? It’s the most important meal of the day, even for you.”
    “Seriously,” she says, turning to me, “his appetite’s amazing!”
    “Right. Well, I’m off to work now, Mom. See you tonight.”
    “Look, he just loves the raisins. He can isolate them from the bread.”
    “ Bye .”
    “Okay, right, I forgot, it’s your first day. Good luck. I hope you’re not in a hurry,” she says, still watching the bird intently. “Lucius likes to see us off these days, so it’ll take a touch longer to get down the driveway. Cheerio.”
    By “a touch longer” Mom means it takes an extra ten agonizing minutes to get down the driveway while Lucius pompously struts back and forth across the path of the car every few seconds. “Isn’t he funny?” Mom yells from the stoop, doing her own Lucius-like strut. “He’s just being affectionate.”
    I’m not sure what to tell Laura when I arrive for our meeting ten minutes late. Since I don’t want to lose this job, blaming traffic seems a better option than laying it at the feet of an overly affectionate fowl.
    Apart from my tardy arrival, the meeting goes as expected. Laura explains that the review will fill only about five or ten minutes of airtime each week. I love books, and I love the idea of reading them and then talking about them on the radio. But I’m still unsure about my ability to do so effectively. My brief history in radio isn’t exactly glowing.
    The first time I’d ever done anything on-air was back in Toronto, where I was working part-time for a popular national radio show at CBC. Most of my duties were limited to replying to emails, completing insignificant paperwork, helping with a few crumbs of audio editing, and putting forth the odd story idea. I didn’t feel overly valued. I didn’t even have my own computer or desk, let alone my own chair. I was the rear left mud flap: useful in principle but not in any way propelling the car forward. So I was also pitching ideas to other shows, trying to gain extra writing and producing experience. My first piece on the radio was about long-lasting marriages. I interviewed three couples who’d been married for more than sixty years and wrote a script that was broadcast nationally. The couples were great. I was not.
    The day I recorded my voice-over for the piece, I sat alone in a dark studio in Toronto while the producer I was working with coached me over the phone from Winnipeg. After recording the script a handful of times, the producer asked if I was tired. “Not really,” I told her. She asked if I’d had any coffee yet. I told her, “Yes, a couple of cups.” She suggested diplomatically that I get another. She was happy to wait. “I think you just need a bit more, I don’t know, life in your