A Day To Remember ... or perhaps to forget! I looked studiously at my watch. "Now there's a point," I thought to myself suddenly, "I could go into the town, buy it and be back at home before I'm noticed. I'm sure no-one would mind and I did promise Arthur I would look after the wretched thing." With this plan of action fresh in my mind I went upstairs and into my bedroom to put on my coat.

"Just feed her twice a day and leave her some water, " were the instructions left by Arthur. Easy as pie I thought to myself, but he did not tell me what to do with her when she started to get restless. It seemed that her apparent frustration was a pining for home and her normal owner. Singing "Here Winifred, how are you - being a good girl then?" every now and again seemed to make her worse. On the third day the irate Toucan could take no more and in the evening I went to feed her in the usual way and was contemplating wearing protective gloves when I saw what looked like the efforts of an amateur basket weaver. The gleaming cage which Winifred had been perched in was almost reduced to wreckage. She stood amongst the twisted wire with half of her mirror grasped triumphantly in her yellow beak, a sight I will never forget.

Looking at her now she had a pleased, 'willing to do anything' look which would have deceived almost anybody but to the trained eye the look was merely a façade and the terrible Toucan was enjoying herself tremendously. Since her 'cage-crunching' session the previous day her miserable face was a thing of the past. Now her beak bore a haunting grin and her beady eyes gleamed. The cage was still intact but I couldn't give it back to Arthur.

"No", I thought to myself, "It is my duty to buy a new one and make sure she doesn't demolish it." With Winifred in such an exuberant mood the latter seemed extremely difficult but 'duty is duty' as the saying goes, and shortly Winifred and I were making our way to the bus stop.

After a discussion about the bus regulations and fares for Toucans with the rather nasty bus driver, I paid my money and was about to take my ticket from the driver's ticket machine when Winifred, her head out of the cage, intervened and decided I should have seven tickets instead of the normal one. She promptly presses a button on the machine and clutched the roll of tickets in her beak with faint reminiscence of her pose with the mirror from her cage a couple of days earlier. Several old ladies muttered, "Shouldn't be allowed" as I made my way to a seat and quite honestly I agreed with them, but what could I do with Winifred determined to make the most of her excursion?

I thought she would settle down now but oh no, one prank was not enough. I rang the bell as we approached our stop but Winifred insisted on having a go on this newly found amusement. I tried to stop her before all the other passengers looked around but in doing so almost received a nip from her beak. After several imitations of Big Ben at midnight she decided that enough was enough and we got off, terrifying the old ladies in the process.

Mr Arnold, the pet shop owner, had never liked me since I'd called on of his prized Labrador puppies 'rather large for a hamster' so I thought I would try the hardware shop first as I had seen some pet cages in the window.

The shop front was displaying buckets and mops and other cleaning utensils. Judging by the look on her face, Winifred had never seen a shaggy mop before. Whether it was just one of those days or she just wanted to make a nuisance of herself, I will never know but I was determined not to let her cause a catastrophe.

I tugged on her cage but she refused to let go of the mop. I put the cage down and tugged on the mop. I had a feeling she would let go and cause me to fall backwards on the pile of large basins behind me, so I tried to be more subtle in my attempts to free the mop from her grip. Slowly I moved my hand near to the mop end. The terrible Toucan, in one darting movement, beak thrust forward, dealt a deadly blow, trapping my fingers in her beak. I leapt backwards, my fingers throbbing and for a brief moment saw Winifred emerging from her cage. Her sudden movement had squeezed her body through the large gap. I was about to call out to her when, in my anxiety, I stumbled on the mop and fell backwards through the doorway. I stood up and rushed into the shop. A squawk and the clatter of several saucepans made the location of the Toucan known to everybody. As she approached the garden furniture, leaving the stack of cleaning fluid in not altogether tidy fashion, I thought she was trapped.

Winifred was in full flight, but even so, the obstacle of the table and chairs was just too much. With a final leap she clung to an umbrella from a table and with a squawk of triumph brought it crashing to the ground, trapping myself, Mr. McDonald the shopkeeper, and two customers.

Winifred stood up, acclaiming her victory and turned to survey her four victims. Two customers emerged from behind the saucepans which had been so decoratively spread over the floor by the beady-eyed bird. With a commanding squawk she sent them back. With the whole shop at her mercy the all conquering Toucan took refuge in a watering can.

Mr. McDonald lifted the umbrella from over his head; still dazed he seized the 'overgrown sparrow' as he called it and replaced it in the old cage. I knew where I wasn't too popular and made a hasty exit leaving Mr McDonald to tend to his re-arranged display.

A few days later Arthur and his family returned home.

"How was Winifred whilst I was away?" he asked.

"Well", I replied, "Nothing much happened", but added more truthfully "A day with Winifred could never be uneventful".

I had enough proof of that and, judging by that and, judging by the "No Toucans Allowed" sign in the Hardware shop, so had Mr. McDonald.

Matthew Vincent 2A

| Fiction Index | 1980 Magazine Index | HOME |