The Assassins

marie aquilino
Jul 22, 2017 · 4 min read

I’d known there was a problem for at least a year. Perfectly healthy baby birds, merle babies, dead in the garden. I would watch them grow and jump and beep under the pines. I built little shelters for them when it rained. I’d put them back inside the yard when they’d slip through the fence. And I’d call to them in the morning. I’d known the parents for years. A merle couple so hardworking that I named them: Mr. Handsome and Her majesty. But now they were dying.

While she was on the nest, Mr. Handsome sang for a dozen hours a day. His routine improved every year. New toots and tweets and phrases he’d picked up from the neighbours mixed with wild medleys that synthesised traffic and public works. Then he’d add his made up, zippy one-liners. He shouted out warnings, flew straight into nosey pigeons, and scared the neighbour’s nineteen-year old blind cat back inside. Mr. Handsome ran the neighbourhood.

Once they were on the ground, he took half the brood under his care. Her Majesty took her chicks into the back garden, but he stayed out front with his. He collected tiny bugs, ants, earth worms, while the chicks popped and bopped behind him, begging for more and calling in their tiny high pitched fledgling voices. They were phenomenal parents.

Then I found one of the babies dead. The rest of the family had left for the season. A little heartbroken, I buried him under the scrubby lemon tree that never got going but always had one piece of fruit. He was small but not sickly. I scoured the garden for signs of poison, a cat, a rat, anything that might have attacked his plump little body. Nothing. There were no scratches, no marks, no holes, and no blood. Not a trace of the way the died on his velvet body.

Next season, two of the most beautiful tikes were dead, one under the bamboo, the other a few feet away. They looked like tiny soldiers that suffered sudden heart attacks. They were the two the father had fed and protected for hundreds of hours, the two that danced around on the deck, fell dizzy under the warm sun, and jumped on my knee the day before. The parents and other chicks were gone. Again, no sign of foul play. Tears streaming down my face and swearing, I buried them in the little cemetery with their brother. Why in the hell would two wonderful, healthy babies suddenly keel over. Was I responsible? Had something scared them to death? Was someone poisoning them?

Merles nest twice a year, so in the late spring I was relieved. The family left with all the babies. One was very small and ill built. But he was spirited and hilarious, running right up to Puppet, my curly hair poodle mix. He’d pop in front of her nose then scramble off. Two days later, as I raked under the porch I found him lifeless and covered in ants. No sign of an attacker. I sobbed and buried his brave little body in a red silk napkin next to the others.

“I think I know what’s killing the babies,” I told my partner. “Crazy but possible,” she said. I searched the internet. There was a strange story of baby merles dying suddenly in Wales, no trace of the villain or the cause.

Then I moved my office upstairs, with a bird’s-eye view of the garden. I was still moving in and had blocked the window with my desk. One of the babies was screaming. I was six feet away.

Mr. Handsome was hunched over, his wings spread wide like a cape, head flat. His bright orange beak open. Panting hard, he circled as the mother knocked the baby off the branch. I watched in horror and banged on the window. Her Majesty swooped, pounced, and jumped on the tiny chest. I flew down stairs, yelling HEYHEYHEY. The mother forced her beak down the tiny throat. She was trying to suffocate the beautiful fluffy brown baby that always sat at the very top of our giant red stone. She was one of the babies the father raised.

They were in the neighbour’s yard. I threw a rock. The terrified baby broke free. Both parents gave chase. “Assassins.” I cried. A neighbour poked his head out. “The mother has been murdering her babies.” I started to explain. “I was right,” I said. “The father was the accomplice.” He shut the window.

Infanticide. But why? Urban merles don’t migrate far if at all. Was there an ancient glitch in the genetic code that told them to cull the flock before leaving. Or was it always the fledglings raised by the father that the mother destroyed?

Two hours later at nearly dusk, the baby landed on the fence. Mr. Handsome was right behind her. But killing wasn’t his job. I yelled at him as him stalked and menaced her. Her Majesty didn’t return. The baby stayed on for a few more days; then she too was gone.

Mr. Handsome and Her Majesty still raise their chicks in the vicinity, but no longer in our garden. He and I still call back and forth to one another, playing our game of oneupsmanship. And I still let him have the last word. But our friendship isn’t the same. I know his secret.