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Cuckoo.

It was the thirty first of June, Monday eleven fifteen in the morning, a fine sunny day that I heard the cry of the Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Putting my hand in my pocket I turned over my small change. Many years ago an elderly lady had told me that when one first hears the cry of the Cuckoo one must turn over one’s money. In this way one’s purse would never become empty. This old saying has stuck in my head and for years I always turn over my small change when I first hear the cry of the Cuckoo. My friend Shamus the Leprechaun asked me why I turned over my small change. I told him the story that the elderly woman had told me all of those years ago. Shamus broke out into peels of hearty laughter. “Perhaps I should do the same with all of my gold,” he laughingly said. “My what a rich man I would be today if it were true.” “Shamus, my purse has never been empty since I listened to the woman, perhaps it is true after all.” Shamus smiled a knowing smile and told me of the man that had heard of the Leprechauns saving their gold in iron pots or cauldrons. “All Leprechauns have a bank that they deposit their money in. How would the gold increase if it were left in an iron pot? No we all deposit our money in banks and wait for the interest on the money to increase that is how we get rich.” “But turn your money over if that is what you believe in. We Leprechauns know that when the Cuckoo calls she has probably laid an egg in a strange bird’s nest. The call is really her way of shouting her triumph that she has once again got the better of another bird.”

We both heard the call of the Cuckoo again. “Something is strange,” said Shamus. “The Cuckoo always flies away from the nest that she has just laid an egg in.” We both walked to where the noise of the cuckoo’s call is coming from and to our surprise sitting on a branch is a parrot the bright green of her feathers gave her away she is sitting next to a nest and is eating an egg. Shamus climbed on to a branch and called down to me,” she is eating the Cuckoo’s egg the other eggs in the nest the parrot did not touch. On a whim I called the parrot, “Polly come here I softly called and to my surprise She flew on to my shoulder. Shamus climbed down from the tree and we both smiled. The Cuckoo had laid an egg in a strange nest and Polly that is what I call her had taken a fancy to the egg and eaten it. I must admit that I was a little embarrassed at Polly’s calls of Cuckoo, Cuckoo as we made our way back to my home.

Polly now has a large room in my conservatory all to herself. Food and fresh water is given to her every day and I am in touch with a Pet Shop to buy a companion for my Polly. I think that I will call her companion when it arrives Cuckoo. After all if we had not heard Polly’s cries of cuckoo we would never have found her. I have stopped turning my small change over in my pocket since I have Polly and Shamus has returned to his home in Ireland. He still places his gold in a bank and is I believe a very rich man if not in money then surely in experience.

My new Parrot has arrived and comes to me when I call Cuckoo and Polly is not the least bit jealous and shares all of her food and water with her new mate cuckoo.