The Christmas Kereru

Do you ever have a sixth sense or have the feeling things are meant to be a certain way or that little messages get sent from our loved ones, our guardian angels? Could be the little man in your head telling you to put a dollar on the donkey in the next race. We have a running joke that dad has come back as a bumble bee and dive bombs us in the garden. Apparently bees are protective which might explain the dreams I had in hospital of swarming bees around a hive. There to protect me. Awesome drugs eh. Our Christmas Kereru story is one of those moments ...

As you know, the decision to go ahead with the surgery was taken a couple of days before Christmas. We saw Dr "Griff Rhys Jones" for a check up on the Monday, he did a "shock and awe" at the pulsating carotid and despite me saying "take a breath it's the first time you've seen it I've had it since June", Dr J was adamant we needed to do something. Me and my J were thinking, end of the year, 2016, yeah right. But we've got 3 of my mothers sisters coming over at the end of January and I've got a Learning Connexion course to start in February. 14th Jan. Done and dusted. Well we know how it all worked out now don't we, eh, hindsight and all, oh yeah, feeling pretty sure of yourself now eh Reenie. But back then during the run up to Christmas, time slowed down to the big slo-mo for us. We had all had a big, busy, stressful year and we were all looking forward to the big end of year exhalation. Catching up with family, beach time, Christmas ham, Heroes chocolates, new babies, wine-time, J on the guitar, mom singing Nobody's Child, bro singing Nobody's Child and the inevitable relationship-testing game of Articulate. Perfick!   

So we held back from sharing our news until after New Year. We didn't admit it to each other but every moment we looked on as if it could be our last. The Christmas toast - "2015 was a great year, 2016 will be even better" and the Auld Lang Syne that we forgot about and had to regroup everyone together for.  These moments were clouded with 'what if's'.

Let's go back to Christmas Eve. We kept our promise to go to mass with our newest family member, baby E. It was a beautiful evening. Afterwards me, J and mom came home, "opened the bar" and sat on the deck. We had company. In the form of a big, beautiful, bird sitting in amongst the lettuces, not moving a great deal. "Where's Woody?" We locked the cat down and observed Big Bird. That bird is not moving. It's not dead, could be stunned. They often smack into the window and take a while to get right. It was 9pm Christmas Eve and this bird wasn't going anywhere so we Googled "injured kereru". Drop bird off to Wellington zoo seemed the best solution for this injured native bird. Except the zoo was shut and we were away from Boxing Day for a couple of days. Ok we could lift it up, put it in a box and take it to a park and let it go. Go figure you mean. Nah. This bird was now in our care and we were gonna have to find room in the Inn for it. Our "stable" was a little hut made out of pongi trunks in the back garden. A little hideaway we inherited with the house, a potting shed. J whooshed Big Bird into the shed, put a pot of water and some nuts and leaves in there and nailed tarpaulin to keep the cat from getting in. There are loads of gaps between the trunks for air and weeds to grow through but not big enough for the cat to get in. Next day, Christmas Day, we checked on BB and he was right in the far corner under the bench. He wasn't going anywhere. Just before Christmas dinner, about 7pm, we took the tarp down to see if BB was ready for flight. He popped out alright and attempted a lift off but still not ready to fly. The wings opened out but one of them looked damaged. So back into solitary confinement for a few days. We'd check him again when we got back and if he was still struggling to fly we'd take him to the zoo. Boxing Day morning we set off early to meet up with family and our Christmas story about the bird in a manger made the rounds. 

We got back Tuesday and j went to check on BB. Unpinned the tarp. Looked under the benches. No sign of him. I went out and had a poke around. Nah. Not there. No evidence of cat action thank God. No feathers, no blood, nothing. It's like BB was never there. What The actual F***? Hang on a minute, what the hell happened to the roof? The plastic transparent corrugated roof of the pongi shed was split and there was a gaping hole of blue sky in its place! BB must have rested up, fixed his wing and made a run for it! It was a miracle! He rose again after the third day! Oh sorry wrong feast day. This was our good omen, our fortune cookie. Outside my window in Plastics there were two wood pigeons perched throughout my whole stay. One called Fred and one called George. My guardian angels... Sweet, sweet the memories you gave to me, you can't beat the memories you gave to me