Chicken with a side of partridge anyone?

It's going to the birds.  All of it.

Again, like some demented clockwork, not orange, the bell rang at 11:56 pm, which was astoundingly similar to the prior nights.  At the door was a new Lakeside Livery delivery person, complete with a stack of cartons at his sides.

The largest had lots holes, from which sounds of angry birds were emitted.  It sounded like a bad argument where 150 people were arguning at high pitch and higher volume.

I signed the delivery receipt, and stuffed the copy emblazoned with Lakeside Livery at the top of the page, and absolutely no information about the sender on it.  I crumpled it and stuffed it in my bathrobe pocket.

After wrestling the packages inside, and opening the first, I realized I now owned more birds.  This time it was French chickens.

Well, hens.  There were eggs in the bottom of the container, which was filled with straw.  Three of the eggs had shifted during transit, leaving a gooey mess of straw and egg yolk.  As I looked around for a towel or something, the tallest of the remaining boxes tipped over and another bird squeal split the air with bloodcurdling efficiency.

Who knew that partridges could be so loud?

I cut the cardboard away from the tree, and after ten minutes of struggle, got the little cage holding the partridge into the spare bedroom/office, and put one very irritated partridge into a large cage I'd gotten at the local dollar store so he'd have more room.  Of course, with two other partridges inside, that cage was getting crowded. A cage rated for four parakeets is no match for three partridges.

As I walked back to the living room, my bare feet encountered something that was both crunchy and slimy at the same time.  You guessed it.  The newly liberated hens had thanked their liberator by laying two more eggs, and I'd just walked in them.

The third parcel held a cage with two doves inside.

I shooed all the birds into the spare bedroom, and managed to shut the door without more feathers flying.  The lights were off, and I was off to clean my feet properly and to clean up the floor.  Then I was ready for sleep, big time.

Yet, it was not to be.  As I was just drying my foot, the doorbell rang again.  This time, I got there in record time.

You guessed it.  I had another delivery from Lakeside Livery.  Chances were, with all the livestock in a "only cats allowed" building, it would be that Shetland pony I wanted when I was ten.

But no, it was four cartons. Four large cartons.  I needed to find out who hated me, and birds generally, by sending me these gifts.  And I use the term "gift" sarcastically.

I looked at the clipboard stuffed under my nose.  Before I signed, I asked the major question I needed to have answered.  "Who is sending me this stuff?"

Delivery person grunted.  Literally.  Not an "I don't know," or any communication of "I've got no idea."

Nope, not any of that.  Just a grunt, "Unnnnh."

"I don't feel like signing this until you tell me who is sending all this stuff to me.  Please, if you have any sense of decency, please just tell me."

Nothing.  But this time, he pointed at a number in the column marked "Sender Code"  I checked the carbon copy under the ticket I was signing, because the whole thing was apparently done in quadruplicate.  I scrawled, delivery person yanked the pen from my hand, stuck it behind his hatless ear, and turned on his heel.  At least I had memorized the number, but I needed to find a pen fast.

It was impossible to find a pen fast.  I heard someone say, "You nitwit, the pen, the number is 12490211.  12490211, 12490211."

I was thinking "shut up" and other find phrases, and tried to remember the code.  It wasn't working.  In searching for the pen, which was clipped to a sheet with all my recent code number and password changes.  

Finally I got a pen from my briefcase besid ethe door, and wrote down, 15496221.

Victory!  I'd be able to contact Lakeside in the morning, and find out who was actually behind this.

It was getting bad.

The first box I opened had a tag on the top that read, "Collie Birds, None are named Lassie"

Okay.  A gift giver with a sense of humor.  I got the cage with the four Non-Lassies into the spare room which woke up all the feathered inhabitants, and the cacophony began again in earnest.

I tore open the tallest of the cardboard boxes, and inside was another pear tree, with a tiny cage holding an upset partridge.  I threw the cardboard, which hit the pear tree that arrived only minutes earlier, knocking it to the ground.  Pears went rolling all over the living room, and in the confusion, I stepped in one, then stepped in the egg that got away from me, right before I went to clean my foot off.

I didn't care.

It didn't matter if the egg was ground into my carpets.  It didn't matter if I was knee deep in cracked eggs.  I just needed to open the remaining two boxes.

As I suspected from the straw poking out of the one carton, I had another three hens.  I couldn't care less if they were French or Spanish or Chinese.  They were loud.  They'd laid 7 eggs, none of which were broken.   I took a few moments, grabbed a pan from the kitchen, and stuck all the eggs inside.  The ones that really got my attention though were the two turtle doves, which were lobbying hard to be part of a certain Vice President's hunting party.

An hour later, all the boxes were broken down and put out for disposal.and recycling.  The birds were all in the extra bedroom, the lights were off and it was only (Only!?!?) two am.  As in Ack Emma.

All I needed now was an early morning raid courtesy of some demented zoning inspectors or my landlord pounding on the door about the noise.

I turned the stereo to play some soft music.  I was hoping that something that sounded musically boring, like Mantovani, or even Manilow, would lull the noisy birds to sleep. I don't often admit I own such music, but any and all records, cds or tapes in that line of elevator like music were gifts.  From people that don't know me, and couldn't care less about my real taste in music.  (In case you are wondering, I'm a big fan of classical, romantic, and truly enjoy the sonata form performed by strings.)

Anyway, I had the number in my pocket, and after every creature inside my flat was where they belonged for the night, I set up the laptop and started to try a simple search of Lakeside Livery shipping records, if there were any tracking information available online.

Nothing.

Absolutely, positively nothing.

I leaned back against the pillows on my bed, closed my eyes for a moment and nodded off.

Day Two -- Another Near Midnight Assault on the Senses

Of course, that title presumes that senses exist.  Common senses exist, but sadly my hearing has just taken a battering more intense than most rock concerts in Grant Park.

At precisely 11:54 pm, as in 6 to Midnight, a cacophony of car horns, truck horns and the obligatory loud voices were heard in the alleyway that borders the back of my apartment building.

Then, a few loud cracks in the air, a couple of whistle sounds, and a deep explosive sound caused the building to literally rock on its foundation.  It was not an earthquake.  It wasn't a real bomb.  In fact, it sounded like someone was doing the pre-New Year's Eve fireworks 6 days early.

I opened my eyes and glanced again toward the window and the laser flashes of police lights spilled into my bedroom.  By the time I was fully awake, the doorbell rang. Then it rang again.  A third time.

By the time the bell was set off in the obligatory "shave and a haircut, beat, beat, six bits", I was at the front door and there was the new delivery guy from Lakeside Livery. 

He had two large boxes with him and a clipboard thick with delivery receipts.  Without a single word, he shoved it under my nose, slapped a greasy pen in my left hand and said the only word I ever heard him speak.  "Sign."

Now, this was a first.  Lakeside Livery was not in the business of delivering parcels to residences.  They were a business to business outfit, and picked up delivery orders from businesses that had more business than trucks.  In doing so, they kept costs down, which meant they weren't much on the pleasantries, and were very much into fast, furious and cheap service.  As such, some companies never did add that extra truck to their fleet.  They just used Lakeside as an extra employee that never took a day off, with trucks that never needed an oil change on company time.

I signed the appropriate line, and noticed the receipt had the address of the sender covered over by a large sticker that proclaimed "Lakeside Livery wishes you and yours a very Happy Holiday Season."  They even had a picture of Secretariat pulling an old fashioned milk wagon festooned with evergreen garlands and poinsettia blooms. 

I was offended by the desecration in that picture.  First off, the whole use of the "holiday" thing, when they were clearly celebrating end of the year crunch time, and not thinking for a second about peace on earth, or about which holiday was being celebrated with all the red and green.  Second, I was really offended by the use of Secretariat, complete with a blanket of roses over him, just like the photos that are plastered all over every article, Wiki-something entry, and school kids essay about that legendary horse.  A horse, mind you, that would never, ever, never have pulled a wagon of any sort.  Especially not a dairy wagon from pre-fire Chicago.

Anyway, the delivery guy grunted as he stuffed the pen under the stocking cap he wore.  His cap was so dirty that I cringed a bit having held a pen that had likely been removed from that location before I used it to scrawl some evidence of delivery.

"Hey, you're new on this job, aren't you?"  I asked as he turned and headed down the hall to the elevator. 

"Yeah" And, nothing.

"What's your name?"

Nothing.  Not a whimper, grunt or other sound.  Just the sound of the elevator doors opening and then closing softly behind him.

Well, it was time to see what was inside the boxes.  I opened both in the hallway, because one was too unwieldly to move and the other was too big to fit through my doorway.

Inside the first was a huge cage housing two doves.  It was one of those old fashioned looking parrot cages, which was about three feet high and about three feet wide.  When the light hit the birds, I could see they were beautiful white doves, with just a bit of gray shading around the wings and some bluish feathers on their heads. The tag affixed to the ornate ball at the top of the cage that formed a cap had a hand painted turtle on it.  I flipped it over and the message read, "Two Turtle Doves From Your Very Own True Love..."

Oh.

Oh cr...

Oh Crikey.

The other box had to be cut away.  I needed my knife, and by the time I found it, the cat had already gotten a decent hole ripped into the side and a few feathers had floated out onto the carpeting.

I shooed the cat back into my flat and used the hole in the side of the box to body wrestle the box into my own entryway.  When I cut the cardboard away, my worst fears were realized.

I had another pear tree.  This time with real pears on it.  And, in a tiny cage, which probably was for protection of the partridge inside it during transport, there was one extremely agitated bird.  I could swear smoke was coming off its pin feathers.

After some effort, I removed the tiny partridge cage from the pear tree, took it and the larger cage with the turtle doves inside, and moved both into the spare bedroom/office. 

The lightning fast flash of gray fur told me there was a cat in the room, ready to spring forth and get at least four extra large meals at the birds' expense.  I wasn't up for livestock slaughter inside my flat, especially since those sorts of activities brought all sorts of city inspectors, fines, fees, payoffs and other legal, and not so legal stuff that could be very uncomfortable indeed.  Especially for my empty pocketbook.

I got the cat out of the room using the oldest kitty con in the book.  The ball with a bell inside is a never miss attention grabber for the feline set.  He fell for it. 

I closed the door behind me, pulled the key from the hook next to the door, and locked the room behind me.  After all, I have a cat that could have graduated from as a bad lockpick, but successful door opener, and was so silent at it, that he'd win prizes at any seven bells school since Dickens wrote about Fagin's establishment more than a century earlier. 

It was time for sleep.  The police lights were still flashing in the alleyway.  I heard someone yell, "Get that horse out of here!  Now!."

Nah.  Couldn't be.  Lakeview Livery would never use a delivery system from a prior century, hauled by a horse that's been dead almost as long to deliver boxes to little old Moi.

I drifted off to sounds that could have been hoofbeats.  Horses hoofbeats.

Not a chance.  It had to be someone's stereo.  After all, this was the big city.  When you hear hoofbeats generally, think horses not zebras.  When you hear hoofbeats in Chicago, think boombox, not horse drawn wagon-box.  Right?

Rrrrrriiiight.