The Only One in the Stadium

Floyd the football player didn't know one bird from another. Oh, maybe a robin and a crow, and if he thought about it, a duck or swan, maybe a pelican if he saw a picture, possibly an ostrich and the big-tailed peacock. But Floyd was a man of action so he didn't think about such things. In fact, he didn't think much at all: He did.

But now that he was flat on his back like an upside-down turtle in the plaster hell of a full-body cast. Even his neck was straight and his arms and legs stuck out like white-plastic drainpipes. Since he was horizontal for the season, Floyd was obliged to be silent and observe. Nothing to cheer here.

Anyone who's been in the football player's condition after a major mishap -- his was a four-car collision at the intersection of Highway 1 and 80 -- knows that when lying flat one's field of observation is severely limited, namely to the area only the eye muscles can stretch to see. And since his bed was aimed toward the window, Floyd Bucket found, after the first month, that there wasn't much action outside the big hospital window. Before the bird feeders were installed, all he could see was his toes, and he wished to God that no fly or blood-sucking bug would exercise his will on those unreachables.

Throughout his life Floyd had felt that everything that fluttered was the same. A bird. He might add dumb blondes, but he never cared about them either. The only reason he might care about the four-legged dumb-dumbs was the jokes that flew around the lockers. But birds were for the birds, not for people.

Once he missed the word ornithologist on a biology vocabulary test. To the fullback it was just another -ologist, someone who studied things. Had he known that they studied birds, he would have dismissed that, too, because everyone knows that bird watchers are watchers, not doers like him. This was before it sank deep within his cast that he 'd changed from a man of action to a spectator.

Before the birds, when the sun reflected off the white snow and was so bright the boy had to squint, Nurse Bailey put a remote within finger-reach. The former line-cruncher poked the button that ordered the curtains closed. But which was worse, to stare at the pattern of those round roses all day or squint out the long-panneled glass? Both drove the ex-football player crazy.

But all this was a month after he'd been gurneyed into the room and had stared at the TV. A month. My God, that month of watching the tube was an eternity in hell! During that endless, tortuous time, Floyd the fullback swore he would NEVER become a spectator.

After the man in the cast had verbally abused everything that existed outside his plaster prison, Ms Bailey told Head Nurse Johnson who asked Dr. Benton who suggested to Floyd's mother who quickly commissioned a carpenter to build several bird feeders. Soon two workmen hung precariously from a rope-taut trestle, the only joy Floyd experienced since the shock had left his body and he no longer saw double. The men set up a veritable carnival of feeders. They also created an ingenious way to

restock the plastic tubes and windowed houses and wooden platforms with seeds and nuts and all the goodies that birds like. Floyd's mother figured that since the athlete didn't like to watch TV , let him stare at the birds which was a live show.

The show started with some little brown jobbies. Floyd thought they were both bold and chicken-hearted, like the first-year tackle who's as big and strong as any of the veterans but hesitant about pursuing. Once the little birdie got his wings, however, he was as much a robber as the rest of the feathered opportunists.

Since they were the only animals that pecked at the seeds, Floyd began to notice that they weren't nondescript birds as he first thought. He saw that they were dressed in more colors than brown and were not all the same size at all.

Before long the yellow birds came. They colored the window scene and reminded the fullback of a team with brand new uniforms, the kind that no one wants to get dirty. Grunge a little mud into, boys, add a patch of blood, and you might as well go for broke and even dare a tear. Yeah, the yellow tweetie-birds sure livened up the game.

After the painkiller had dripped into his veins and Floyd's mind shifted from inside the cast to outside the glass, he became aware of the blue-colored birds too. They sported tufted heads like fancy football helmets. Their strong-beaks looked like metal face-masks, their black-stripes like jersey-painted numbers. These were the boldest challengers yet. In fact, they dominated the bird feeders every time they entered the field.

Sharks, thought Floyd. They're like the undefeated team that sticks it to the last-in-the-conference with no mercy. When Nurse Bailey told him that the blue jay was related to the crow it didn't mean a thing. The white-uniformed nightingale had to tell him that crows were scavengers who ate

road kill and weren't adverse to killing smaller birds for breakfast. The blue jobbies that ruled the feeders never massacred, but they did shriek, peck, and drive off all the others. Ball-strippers, thought Floyd, as the adrenaline poured inside the cast of his horizontally benched body.

One day Floyd's toes itched and twitched even through the numbing of the drugs. It so preoccupied him that he didn't notice the swarming of the black birds outside the window. Unnoticed, they took over the feeders, en masse. Had the football player seen the invasion, he would have called it gang tackling. They made the food disappear even faster than by those big, blue, airborne sharks. When Floyd finally looked beyond his toes, all he saw was empty feeders and a flurry of black feathers. Thieves, you're no better than the Special Team that crunches the ball-returner on kick-off!

Red birds, gray birds, yellow, gold, blue, white, and every haze and hue. Even some purple and metallic-green joined the lineup through the months. If Floyd had to stay on his back and the only exercise he got was moving his eyeballs, at least at the end of the game that part of his immobilized body would be in good shape.

In time, the fullback began to identify with the birds more and more. He substituted their play for the action on the field. Solid goal-guarders, those. Clever bump-and-run, them. Noisy spectators, that bunch. At least Floyd the fullback experienced some action though vicariously.

Then the first squirrel came. Floyd had never heard of a flying squirrel. He thought only birds, blondes, and kites flew. But out of the blue this hairy creature made a crash-landing on the wooden platform and skidded into the window. It startled Floyd like a referee blowing a whistle in his ear. The squirrel took all the time in the world stuffing his cheeks with seeds. He obviously knew he was the invincible warrior on the field, the Theisman Trophy winner among Freshmen. The squirrel stayed as long as

he wanted and ate as much as he cared. Floyd wanted to see how he would leave. The big Oak Tree was way too far to leap to. This would be interesting.

But to Floyd's astonishment the squirrel did leap, though the last few feet he headed groundward. God, how he looked like a fullback diving over the one-yard line!

After the flying squirrel invaded the birds' domain, it wasn't long until his cousin, the gray squirrel, followed. Though Floyd couldn't see it, the aerial acrobat had descended the ropes and pulley system the workmen had rigged to lower the food from the hospital roof. The gray squirrel was a glutton, just like his flying cousins, only more so. He didn't seem to mind when the shrieking, blue-tufted jays, cousins of the crow, darted at him. In Floyd's mind, the gray squirrel was like an NFL team invading a junior high girls' volleyball game.

When the pain wasn't too great, the glare wasn't too bright, or the rose-blossomed curtains weren't closed, the flattened athlete watched the birds and squirrels as long as he was conscious. And, in time, because there was no other game in town, the fullback even began to enjoy being a spectator. The only other time he'd been able to stomach watching anything was when he was on the sidelines during defense or studying films of an up-coming opponent. But now his entire life was spent on his back with appendages out-spread, so what else could he do? How he wished HE could fly!