#107/365 Paintings

Sam was a pet store canary for many years. He was one of the few that didn’t want to be picked, purchased and taken away from the pet store. Sam was a bit of a closet journalist. He liked to listen to the facts and chirp out the stories at night when the store closed. Canaries are pretty, so people hung out around them and spilled some of the grittiest details about their lives.

But there was one conversation in particular that Sam couldn’t get out of his wonderfully feathered head. It went something like this:

Boy: “What do you really want, though?”

Girl: “To be a boy.”

Boy: “Yeah, but that’s in the works…”

Sam perked up. “In the works?” Sam wasn’t the least bit interested in becoming Samantha. But, he realized that if a girl could become a boy (a magic trick for sure) then he could become what he had always wanted to be: An owl. Suddenly, he wanted out of the pet store really bad. So, he preened for days in front of potential buyers. About 3 days later a very nice elderly couple bought him. He tried to escape to the woods to become an owl, but something luckier happened. The old man was an artist. Sam and the old man bonded. Sam would drag out newspapers and magazines with owls on them and take naps on top of the photos. The old man painted one of Sam’s owls. Of course Sam thought he had understood his complex psychology and loved the old man all the more. But the man simply wanted to paint an owl that day. Sam stared at the painting for days. And, just last week he chirped out a 1/2 “Who.” The old man laughed so hard. “You’re a Canara-Owl” he said. Sam was very pleased with himself.