Dear Diary

And...

another day has begun.

Frankie and I are very busy getting the house decorated for Christmas.  I'd say we are about half way done. As we bustle about we see a FedEx truck pull up and stop smack dab at the end of the driveway.  Uh-oh, we look at each other in stunned silence.  It has been weeks since I have ordered anything, so we've no idea why a delivery truck of any kind would stop at our place.

One thing crosses my mind...My True Love.

Deary me, I have no idea what to expect.  Oh my, the box has holes in it...whatever is inside must be alive.

Pllllease, don't let this be birds.

We stop what we are doing and slowly walk around the box.  A label states:

                                                           THIS SIDE UP

                                                    HANDLE WITH CARE

                                                               FRAGILE

Something in the box is flopping around.  Frankie goes for our package opener.  There, in four separate compartments of the box, stand four, shiny, satin finish feathered birds.  They are about the size of robins.  Their beaks are bright yellow, and stand out like sunshine against their coal feathers.

 A slightly pecked note sits atop the birds enclosures.  It reads.  "I hop    ou are d  ighted with these Fo   Cal   ng Birds.  I coul   ot afford to pu  hase the Four and Twenty reqi   ed to make a pa   ry, and I knew you wou   never 'bake them into a pie' an  way; so, simply enjoy the comp     nship of  these del   tful creatures. Your True Lo 

Frankie is about to become unglued, and I must confess, I'm about birded out myself.  The birds have already made themselves at home, and we fear there will be rather raucous outbursts in the sun room until we can decide that to do with our growing menagerie.   I don’t know who My True Love is to begin with, and his idea of a dowry is astonishing…

...actually, I would much prefer more personal gifts, perhaps a shawl to keep my shoulders warm these chilly December evenings, some chocolates to munch, or even a variety of teas would be nice.  Please, True Love, enough with the birds.

Suddenly Frankie and I ponder what the heck a Calling Bird is, and thanks to Answers.Yahoo.com on the good ole’ Internet, we discovered that the four “calling birds” refered to in "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" is an Americanization of the traditional English wording for “colly birds”, and in some places, such as Australia, the variation “calling” is supplanting the original. “Colly” is a dialect word meaning black and refers to the European blackbird Turdus merula.  Well, that takes care of that…

Frankie:  “Why in the world would one bake blackbirds into a pie?”

Me:  “I’ve no idea?”

Back to the Internet we go. And, there on Wikipedia we found the following:

“It is known that a 16th-century amusement was to place live birds in a pie, as a form of entremet. An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained such a recipe: "to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and flie out when it is cut up" and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott.”

Really???  I think I would be most startled if I found some live birds flying out of a pie in my kitchen.

However, we did also find several actual recipes for Blackbird Pies.  Most thankfully most were filled with fruit, not birds; while some did appear to be ‘meat pies’ like the kind you can buy in any frozen food section of your favorite store…thankfully their meat is of the beef or fowl variety.

None of this, of course, helps our quandary.  But, we are blessed in the fact all of the birds so far are in well- kept containers…except for the Partridge who refuses to come out of the Pear tree.  We are seriously thinking that after the holidays we will pay a visit to the local Audubon Society surely they will appreciate our growing collection.  Perhaps they can use them as a ‘learning tool’ at local schools.

Please True Love…a gift I don’t have to feed would be really nice.