The Bird Who Swallowed the Cell Phone

One afternoon, Little Bird was staring up at the sky, thinking about lunch.

At the same time, in the luxury apartment building next to Little Bird’s tree, a human was out on his balcony, talking on his cell phone. “Hey, Larry,” the human said. “Can you hear me? Yeah, I just got this new cell phone. It’s about the size of my thumb . . . Runs off the heat of my body! No charger! Hold on . . . I’ve got crummy reception.”

The human leaned over his balcony a little more, when all of a sudden, the phone slipped out of his hand. “Darn it!”

A second later, Little Bird noticed an object plummeting out of the sky, headed right toward his nest. I’ve never heard of a worm falling from the sky, thought Little Bird.

Excitedly, Little Bird opened his mouth as wide as he could, and—gulp—the cell phone whooshed right down his gullet. Funny, Little Bird thought. Not so much flavor for such a big worm.

With his belly full, Little Bird fell into a slumber, until he was awakened by a most peculiar noise. “Who’s there?” Little Bird asked.

The phone rang again, but when he looked around his nest, no one was there. “Hmph.”

A moment later, the phone rang again. And again. Till a family of birds from the nest next door stopped their chirping to see where this disturbance was coming from. “Little Bird! Is that you?” they asked, peeking their beaks into Little Bird’s nest.

Then the phone rang again.

The neighbor birds, with ruffled feathers, held their hearts and gasped.

As luck would have it, the ring of the human’s phone meant a very rude thing in Little Bird’s language. Little Bird didn’t even know what it meant for sure. He only knew that his friend had said it once to his mommy, and that she washed his beak out with soap!

“I swear, it’s not me!” Little Bird insisted. But when the phone rang yet again, the birds raised their beaks high into the air and flew away, disgusted. Something strange is going on, thought Little Bird.

Soon, it was lunchtime, and Little Bird’s mother returned to their nest with a giant worm dangling from her beak. “Time for lunch, Little Bird!”

Little Bird opened his mouth wide, waiting for that succulent wormy taste, when all of a sudden, the human’s phone began ringing again. His mother gasped. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything, Mommy.”

But the phone rang yet again.

“That’s not funny, Little Bird! We don’t ever use that language!”

Word spread through town about Little Bird’s foul mouth. All around the bird feeder, there was gossip:

“Did you hear how that lazy bird speaks these days?”

“Imagine, his mother, digging his worms for years . . . this is the respect she gets?!”

“She should kick him right out of the nest!”

“Please, Little Bird,” his mother begged, “you have to stop this! You’re giving us a bad reputation!”

Little Bird opened his mouth to tell his mother that he loved her, but he was interrupted once again, and his mother started to cry.

Little Bird didn’t want to upset his mommy anymore, so he decided it was probably best just to keep his beak shut. So he went to bed and cried so hard his twig pillow got soggy.

Soon the leaves began turning colors, which meant it was time to fly south for the winter. “Come on, Little Bird,” his mother said. “Pack your things. It’s time to go.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna go this year, Mama.”

“What? Not gonna go this year? But that’s what we do! We fly south! Every winter!”

“I just don’t feel like it.”

Then the phone rang.

“Well, fine! With that attitude, you can stay right here for the winter! Maybe the cold will teach you a lesson!”

The next morning, Little Bird stared up at the sky and watched his family gradually disappear into the distance. Little Bird felt so sad and confused. But at least he didn’t have to worry about upsetting anyone with his ringing.

Then one winter’s day, Little Bird was shivering in his nest, trying to keep warm, when that same human stepped out onto his balcony, to talk on his new cell phone. The human was talking away, when all of a sudden, he heard the ring of what sounded exactly like his old cell phone, “Hold on, Larry. You’re not gonna believe this, but I swear I hear my old cell phone again.”

“It’s probably someone else’s,” Larry said.

“Not with that custom ring.”

“Well, it’s probably a bird.”

“It’s not a bird, Larry. The birds’ve already flown south!”

Just then, the human made eye contact with Little Bird. And when Little Bird saw the human, he opened his mouth to chirp, but rang instead.

“Is that you who’s been ringing?” the human asked Little Bird.

Little Bird nodded.

“Oh, my gosh! Larry! I gotta go . . . I think this bird ate my cell phone!”

Little Bird felt so confused. He couldn’t imagine why this human seemed so interested in his horrible noise.

Meanwhile, the human had already grabbed his coat and descended 17 flights in his elevator, and was now in the middle of climbing all the way up Little Bird’s tree. A moment later, the human and Little Bird were face-to-face at the entrance of Little Bird’s nest. “I’m so sorry to intrude,” the human explained, out of breath. “But it seems you’ve somehow eaten my one-of-a-kind cell phone!”

Little Bird didn’t know what a cell phone was, so he just stared at the human, shivering.

“A bit cold, eh? Aren’t you supposed to be south about now?”

“I decided not to go,” Little Bird said, his beak chattering.

“Hmm, I see. Well, how ’bout I take you inside, where it’s warm.”

Little Bird nodded graciously.

The human lifted Little Bird off his nest and carefully placed him inside his coat, and as the human climbed carefully back down the tree, Little Bird felt the coziest he’d felt in months.

Upstairs, the human placed Little Bird on his bed, covered him in a blanket, and began rustling through his medicine cabinet for some syrup of ipecac.

“Here. Drink this,” the human said.

Little Bird guzzled it down, and in just a short time, his belly began aching.

“I know, it’s awful. But it’ll feel better in a minute, I promise.”

Sure enough, moments later, the medicine began to work. And all of a sudden, the littlest cell phone plopped right onto the floor!

“There it is! There it is! It’s my cell phone! Do you have any idea the price of this thing? And I didn’t even get the insurance . . . agh!”

Just then, the cell phone began ringing, and finally, Little Bird realized what had been going on all this time! The ringing was not him! None of this had been his fault after all!

“Hello?”

“Where the heck have you been?”

“Oops. Ach! Listen, uh, a bird ate my cell phone. Can I call you back? I gotta wash it off. It’s covered in . . . bird bile.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What do you call that thing?” Little Bird asked the human, who was busy sanitizing his phone.

“It’s a cell phone, Little Bird. You press these numbers and you can call whoever you want and talk with them on it, without even being in the same room . . . or . . . the same nest.”

“You think we could call my mom?”

“Oh, I’m afraid birds don’t use cell phones . . . yet.”

Little Bird sulked. “My family won’t talk to me. Your phone in bird language means something really horrible . . . They thought I was being rude.”

“You don’t say. What’s it mean?”

“I don’t even know. It’s that awful.”

The human looked at Little Bird’s sad face and felt terrible to think he’d inadvertently caused him so much trouble. The human then scratched his chin and squinted his eyes, trying to think of what on earth he could do to help. “Little Bird,” he suddenly said. “I have an idea!”

“You do?”

“Do you know what part of the South your family flew to?”

“They usually go to Atlanta.”

“Atlanta, huh? Well, I think I know where we can find a big enough set of wings that’ll fly us there by the end of the day!”

“Really?”

The human began pressing some buttons on his cell phone. “I believe Southwest has a direct flight . . .”

“Southwest?”

“Come on, Little Bird. Let’s go! We’ve gotta be at the airport in an hour!”

The human threw some clothes in a suitcase. Then they grabbed Little Bird’s things from his nest, and together, hopped in a taxi. And an hour and a half later, Little Bird was flying south in a much different way than he ever had before.

“Wow, this is something else,” Little Bird said, looking out the window. “Sure is a lot easier than the way we fly!”

“Yeah,” the human said, thumbing through a magazine. “Southwest is pretty decent.”

Flight attendant: “May I offer you some nuts, sir?”

Little Bird: “Do you have any seeds?”

Flight attendant: “Sunflower or pumpkin?”

Little Bird: “Sunflower, please.”

Once they were on the ground in Atlanta, the human rented a car, and he and Little Bird went off to look for Little Bird’s family.

“Chirp, chirp!”

“I hear them! I hear them!”

“How can you tell the difference? They all sound the same to me!”

“Oh no! It’s a totally different dialect. Kind of like how you knew the sound of your cell phone!”

The human and Little Bird parked the car and headed toward the chirping. And sure enough, Little Bird saw his family. When Little Bird called out to his mother, all the birds gathered around, looking at Little Bird anxiously. Then a female bird landed on the grass next to Little Bird. “Little Bird? Is that you?”

“Hi, Mama,” Little Bird said. “It’s me!”

“Little Bird! What are you doing? How did you get here? And who is this you’re with?”

The human cleared his throat and explained, “Uh, hiya, birds. Um, Mrs. Bird, I’m here to tell you there’s been a huge misunderstanding. You see, your son . . . he, somehow ate my cell phone . . . It’s a little thing . . . See?” The human made it ring, and Little Bird’s mother wrapped her wings around her earholes.

“Forgive me, madam, I just wanted to illustrate that the noise you were hearing was not Little Bird. It was my cell phone he swallowed. See, Little Bird never meant any harm. He just couldn’t help it.”

When Little Bird’s mother finally understood, she felt so sad she started to cry. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Little Bird. I didn’t understand. Will you ever, ever forgive me?”

“Of course, Mama.”

Little Bird’s mommy wrapped her wings around her son and cried with joy. “From now on, Little Bird, I promise, I will never judge or criticize you again.

Instead, I’ll make sure to understand why you’re behaving the way you’re behaving.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“Can I offer you some worms for bringing home my boy?”

“Uh . . . No thank you, madam,” the human said. “It was my pleasure.”

“Well, thank you so very much.”

And so, the human flew back north, to resume his business. “See you next spring, birds!” And Little Bird and his family returned to their business: looking for worms. And that night, the village birds made a special worm soufflé just for Little Bird. “Deee-licious!” And when it was time for bed, Little Bird climbed into his nest with his mommy and smiled contentedly in the warm, cozy silence.

The End.

—JLK