Low diatribe

A remembrance of all things Ajax.

Ajax was everywhere. He got into everything. Twenty-five days after his disappearance, I'm still finding evidence of him in places I didn't know he'd been.

By Day 10, the reminders were still constant, but something about them had changed. They still made me sad, but they were also making me smile. I hadn't cried about him for a day or two, aside from tearing up a little while talking to my wife.

I saw a moth and immediately thought, “Wow, you would have been a delicious mess.”

Ajax couldn't catch flies on his own yet. He was getting close, though, and watching his tiny fluttering hops as he tried to snatch them out of the air was hysterical. Moths were another matter. He could catch those.

When he caught a moth, it was like a pillow fight with a powder puff. Wing dust everywhere, all over me.

I could picture the whole ridiculous thing.

I miss that little asshole.

By Day 12, normal was starting to feel okay. Not the normal I'd known before Ajax disappeared, but whatever normal was going to look like now.

I took the travel cage off the porch. I put the screens back in the windows.

I'd come to terms with the idea that Ajax was probably off doing some next-level Ajax shit, and if he ever came back, the absence of a cage on the porch wasn't going to stop him. He'd probably swoop through a rapidly closing door, Indiana Jones style, like nothing was amiss.

Because Ajax.

While folding up the cover from the big cage in my bedroom, a nickel fell out and rolled across the floor.

Why was there a nickel on top of the cage cover?

Ajax.

I kept the nickel.

Later, I pulled a track jacket from the wall-facing side of a freestanding coat rack and discovered plenty of evidence that Ajax had enjoyed perching there. Evidence I'd somehow missed until then.

Even after he was gone, I was still discovering where he'd been. Still taking care of his mess.

The next day, my wife and I went out for supper and skating. While we were eating, she noticed something.

“You have rice in your beard.”

“Thank you,” I said, wiping it away with a napkin. “I used to have a guy for that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Ajax had always been happy to help clean food out of my beard. Whether I wanted his assistance was generally irrelevant.

It was funny. It was also sad. Both can be true.

On Day 18, I was driving home when I saw a murmuration of starlings.

It wasn't the largest I'd ever seen, but there were easily a hundred birds swooping and sailing together, moving more like a fluid than a flock.

I gave myself permission to pretend I saw him.

“That's my boy!”

I was beaming.

I know I didn't actually identify Ajax among those birds. I don't even know whether he actually found a flock.

But I like that story.

I'll keep telling it.

When my wife came home from a trip a couple of days later, I told her about the murmuration. I couldn't get through the story without tearing up, even with the smile.

“It's totally possible,” she said, trying to reassure me.

“I know. Of all the possibilities, I like that one the best.”

Later, we started imagining what Ajax might be doing among the other starlings.

“You know he'd be crushing it with the ladies because they would think his accent was cool.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Ajax would clean up.”

And he probably would. Imagine being a perfectly ordinary starling and encountering this strange little fellow who speaks fluent R2-D2 and has an extensive vocabulary of human noises.

An exotic accent, indeed.

On Day 21, I took down the big cage in my bedroom.

There was no grand decision behind it. I already had the power washer out for reasons entirely unrelated to Ajax, and it seemed like a practical opportunity to clean the cage before putting it away.

But the process still had its own quiet ceremony.

I dismantled it piece by piece, preparing it for some future occasion it might be once again needed.

Underneath, I discovered an elaborate mouse den constructed mostly from Ajax's feathers.

For months, I'd wondered why I found so few feathers around his cage despite his constant preening.

At first, it was another little piece of evidence of Ajax. Another trace of him I hadn't known was there.

Then came the realization.

“Oh, so that's where they all went.”

I knew the mice had been stealing his food. Apparently, they'd also been stealing his feathers to furnish their home.

Even the mice had found a use for Ajax.

As I carried the cage sections outside to where I was power washing, I encountered seven little black-and-yellow balls of fluff.

Muscovy ducklings, tentatively making their first foray into the big bright world, their proud mother guiding them.

I was carrying pieces of Ajax's cage. They were taking their first little steps into the yard.

There's no profound meaning in that. It's just life.

Four days later, the ducklings are more duck and less fluff, but they're definitely still fluffy and cute.

Still seven, for today.

We sometimes say “Life on a farm,” even though we don't technically have a farm. But with all the animals and rural setting around Many Hands House, we live pretty close to that kind of existence.

We're surrounded by life in all its forms. We feed it, care for it, watch it grow, get to know its peculiarities, and sometimes watch it end.

Our spring Muscovy brood dwindled over time. There were six for quite a while, then four. Now there are three.

Nature doesn't need all of them to make it. Nature doesn't even want all of them to make it. I have little say in the matter.

Sometimes we know what happened. Sometimes we don't.

Life on a farm.

The more life you surround yourself with, the more life you experience. And the flip side always tags along for the ride.

Living this way has changed my relationship with death.

I've become softer about it. More accepting.

Not indifferent. I don't think anyone could look at what Ajax's disappearance did to me and reasonably conclude that I've become indifferent to losing an animal I love.

The Vanishing Act dashed me against the rocks.

I started writing about Ajax partly because I wanted to remember him and partly because I needed to work through what had happened. Or, more accurately, what I didn't know had happened.

Remembering him brought back other memories. Those led to other other memories, and eventually I found myself reconstructing as much of my personal history as I could recall. All those atomic moments that combine to create whatever it is that considers itself me.

I followed threads and tangents. I started noticing patterns in my behavior, and then patterns in how I thought about my behavior. I began examining the mechanisms of my own deductions, the constant analysis and adaptation I'd always taken for granted.

I started tracking the songs that randomly appeared in my head, and discovering how often some environmental trigger had set them off.

Thinking about my thinking about my thinking.

Metacognitive turtles all the way down.

All because a little bird disappeared.

That's not to say Ajax's disappearance was somehow necessary or worthwhile because it prompted all this reflection. I'd rather have Ajax sitting on my shoulder, trying to steal something he shouldn't have, than any revelation about my own consciousness. But, if I was going to lose an eye, I might as well gain some knowledge.

This is where the remembering led me.

And the remembering itself matters.

Early on, I thought about Ajax's disappearance as a closed box. Inside was the answer to what happened to him, and I might never get to open it.

But there was the other box. Everything I already knew about him. Everything we'd done together.

That box being closed doesn't reach backward. It only closes forward.

Twenty-five days later, I still don't know what happened to Ajax.

But I know about the moths. The tiny fluttering hops. The nickel. The stolen feathers. The rice in my beard. The noises he learned, the things he stole, and the places he perched when nobody was looking.

I know what it felt like to have him borrow my hands while I borrowed his eyes.

And I know that, given the opportunity, I'd do it again.

That's part of what becoming softer about death means for me. Not that losing someone hurts less, but that the possibility of losing them doesn't make the time together any less worth having.

If anything, I've come to appreciate that time more.

Ajax was only with me for a handful of months. I was really hoping for years. Years of learning new things, making new noises, developing new habits, and finding increasingly inventive ways to be an asshole.

I didn't get those years.

I got the time we had.

And it was good.

Today there are seven little Muscovy ducklings wandering around the yard. They're growing quickly. I don't know what will happen to them. I can hope all seven grow up to be magnificent, obnoxious ducks.

But I know better than to assume anything.

Still seven, for today.

Life on a farm.