“Did I tell you my bird story?” Peter asked peeking around the door of my office.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

He sat down in the chair opposite my desk.

“Do you have any chocolates?” he said.

I offered him my candy dish.

“Oh, these look good,” he said as he unwrapped a truffle.

“I found a canary in my garden a few months ago. It had fallen out of its nest. I scooped it up and put it in a box. I fed it and took care of it, but realized with my work hours I couldn’t keep it, so I asked my friend, Luisa, you know, the one with the eight kids, if she’d like to have it.”

“‘What color is it, and will it sing?'” she asked me.

“‘It’s gray, and if it’s a female, she won’t sing,'” I said.

“‘You want me to take a gray canary that won’t sing?'” she said. “‘Oh, alright.'”

“It turned out the family loved the canary and tamed it. It spent most of the time outside of its cage. And she did sing. She’d land on your head and sing her songs. Then one day Luisa called me to come over. When I got there they told me the canary was dead. It was in the freezer waiting for me to have a proper funeral.

“How did it happen?” I asked.

“One of the children sat on it,” Peter said.

Calvin says, “If a bird landed on my head, I’d bay and the poor thing would drop dead.”