Sticky Beak Read online

  I wonder if cockies know about child neglect?

  I shouldn’t be talking like this, not even in my head.

  Dad’s just doing what any normal person would do in his position. Concentrating on the birth of his new baby. All fathers get a bit sidetracked when they’ve got a new kid on the way. Specially when it’s one that doesn’t have anything wrong with it.

  What’s so bad about that?

  Nothing, and I shouldn’t be blubbing like this, it’s stupid.

  I can see Sticky thinks so too.

  I’m making his seed all wet.

  He’s just told me to fall off a rock.

  I think he’s trying to cheer me up.

  Poor Sticky, he’s the one who should be crying, not me. Stuck in here all by himself trying to recover from a nervous condition brought on by six years of inhuman treatment by a monster.

  Darryn The Heartless Peck’s the one who should be punished, not Dad.

  I’m so excited.

  All Sticky’s problems are solved.

  Well, they will be soon.

  Once Amanda gets written permission to use her parents’ video camera.

  What’s more, if my plan works, no Australian cockatoo or budgie or dog or cat or hampster or mouse need ever suffer again what Sticky has suffered.

  Going to school this morning I didn’t have a clue that this was going to be such an important day in the history of pet care.

  For starters, I’d completely forgotten we’ve got a new teacher. I only remembered when Ms Dunning stopped the truck in front of the school gates and handed me ajar of home-made apple sauce.

  ‘For your new teacher,’ she said.

  I groaned inside.

  ‘Come on, Ro,’ said Ms Dunning, ‘a prezzie means a lot to us teachers on our first day.’

  I couldn’t believe it.

  She’s only been semi-retired for two days and she’s already forgotten that only crawlers and bad spellers give new teachers presents. That’s why I wasn’t carrying a plate of apple fritters.

  I was about to remind her, but then I realised she must just be having a vague spell and I decided not to hurt her feelings. It can’t be much fun, carrying a baby round inside you that uses up so much oxygen there’s not enough left for your brain.

  When I got out of the truck, all the kids that had crowded round to wave at Ms Dunning backed away, all nervously eyeing the jar of apple sauce in my hand.

  I walked through them, hoping they’d notice the jar had a lid on and that there wasn’t a single hardware store fan in the playground.

  They didn’t.

  I could only see one kid who looked relaxed.

  Darryn Peck.

  He was standing just inside the school gate, smirking at me.

  ‘Careful Battsy,’ he said, ‘don’t trip over.’

  I walked past.

  He started walking behind me.

  I ignored him.

  I knew he was going to try and trip me, and I knew I could handle it.

  I was wrong.

  What threw me was that he used his brain.

  He waited till I was almost across the playground, then gave a screeching cry, like a cockatoo.

  For a sec I thought it was Sticky, that he’d escaped and was looking for me.

  I glanced up and that’s when Darryn stuck his foot out.

  I felt myself falling forward and my only thought was not to let go of the jar.

  Then I realised I already had.

  Me and the jar flew through the air.

  I slammed into the ground.

  The jar smashed through Mr Fowler’s office window.

  After a while, when I’d worked out which sounds were glass breaking and which were my ears ringing, someone lifted me to my feet.

  It was Amanda.

  She was white with fury and screaming at Darryn Peck.

  ‘You’re dead meat, Peck,’ she yelled. ‘My uncle’s a solicitor.’

  Darryn Peck was looking pretty pale too, but that was because he could see Mr Fowler storming towards us.

  Mr Fowler was angrier than any of us had ever seen him.

  He was so angry that not one person laughed at the apple sauce on his head.

  ‘What happened?’ he thundered.

  There was chaos as everyone tried to tell him something different.

  I kept out of it because my knees had started to hurt a lot and I wanted to see if there was any blood coming through my jeans.

  After a few seconds Mr Fowler sent everyone to their classrooms.

  Amanda hovered, still furious, still shouting, until Mr Fowler threatened to expel her.

  Then he took me into his office.

  The next few minutes were pretty hard on my nerves, partly because Mr Fowler wouldn’t let me speak, and partly because he kept pacing up and down on his glass-covered carpet and I was worried he’d cut himself.

  It was dumb. There I was, the victim of a telemovie-sized injustice, and I was more worried about whether one of the people responsible would slash a major artery in his foot and I’d have to knot his whistle cord round his leg to stop the blood flow.

  ‘I don’t know what happened out there,’ said Mr Fowler, ‘and I probably never will. So I’ll be charitable and assume it was an accident. That’s two, Batts, in four days. One accident is unlucky. Two is careless. If there’s a third . . .’

  He stopped and put his face close to mine.

  Apple sauce dripped onto my shoe.

  ‘. . if there’s a third, watch out.’

  He turned away and I pulled my notebook out to scribble a note asking for a lawyer and a broom to sweep up the broken glass.

  Before I could start writing, there was a knock on the door and a bloke stepped into the office. He was wearing jeans and a multicoloured shirt and he had a ponytail.

  Great, I thought, here am I in the middle of a travesty of justice and some high-school kid who’s off sick with brain damage wanders into the wrong school.

  ‘This is Mr Segal,’ said Mr Fowler, ‘your new teacher. Take her away, Mr Segal, before I forget I’m a Rotarian.’

  On the way to class Mr Segal made conversation.

  I wasn’t really in the mood because my knees were hurting and I wanted some time to myself to plan Darryn Peck’s death, but I could see Mr Segal was trying hard so I joined in.

  ‘So,’ said Mr Segal, ‘you’re Rowena Batts.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Mr Fowler’s told me all about you,’ said Mr Segal.

  I nodded again.

  ‘Never feel inferior,’ said Mr Segal.

  I shook my head. I could see he meant well.

  ‘Pictures,’ said Mr Segal, ‘are more important than words.’

  He smiled.

  I smiled.

  I didn’t have a clue what he was on about.

  Then I realised he must have been talking about his shirt, which had pictures of fish all over it.

  It wasn’t till much later, in class, that I realised he was talking about television.

  By that time Mr Segal had talked about television a lot. He told us he believes television isn’t studied enough in schools. We clapped and whistled, partly because we agreed with him and partly because you have to see how far you can go with a new teacher.

  When we’d finished he told us we were going to spend the last three weeks of the school year studying television.

  We clapped and whistled some more.

  ‘Starting with a project,’ he said when the noise had died down. ‘Tomorrow you start making your own TV programmes.’

  We stared at him in stunned silence.

  For a fleeting moment I thought that perhaps he was a brain-damaged high-school kid after all.

  ‘Hands up,’ said Mr Segal, ‘whose parents have got a video camera.’

  Then we understood.

  About half the class put their hands up.

  I didn’t. We can’t afford a video camera. Not with an apple-polishing machine and a luxur
y nursery to pay for. But I was relieved to see Amanda with her hand up.

  Mr Segal explained the project.

  We’ve got to split into groups and we’ve got one week to make any TV programme we like as long as it’s not rude or offensive to minority groups.

  After the bell went, me and Amanda agreed to keep our group small.

  Just her and me.

  Then I saw Megan O’Donnell wandering around not in a group. I hate seeing kids left out of things just cause they’re slow readers so I looked at Amanda and Amanda nodded and opened her mouth to ask Megan to join our group. Before she could, though, Megan was grabbed by Lucy and Raylene Shapiro who asked her to help them make a documentary about the human side of dry-cleaning.

  It was for the best. Megan’s a nice person but she can get pretty nervous and she wouldn’t have been comfortable doing what I’ve got in mind.

  ‘Shall we do a comedy or a drama?’ asked Amanda.

  I told her I was thinking about something different and wrote it out so she’d get all the details first time.

  ‘Let’s do,’ I said, ‘a fearless in-depth current affairs report exposing to the world Darryn Peck’s heartless and brutal treatment of poor old Sticky.’

  Amanda grinned and nodded.

  ‘Great,’ she said, ‘it’s just what he deserves. Who’s Sticky?’

  Sticky’s really excited too.

  I’ve just told him about the project.

  I didn’t tell him last night because I didn’t want him to suffer the crushing disappointment if Amanda’s parents said no about the video camera.

  I needn’t have worried.

  Amanda came running into school this morning with a bag over her shoulder and a big grin on her face.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she yelled.

  Darryn Peck looked up from Trent Webster’s video camera which he was trying to focus on a pimple on Doug Walsh’s bottom.

  ‘Hope it’s not catching,’ he smirked.

  He and his mates fell about.

  Me and Amanda just smiled quietly to each other.

  We resisted the temptation to tell him that soon he won’t have much to laugh about because we didn’t want him running off to South America and hiding.

  As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered, because for the whole day we didn’t even get to take the lens cap off the camera.

  For a bloke who wears fish shirts, Mr Segal’s a real stickler for paperwork.

  First he insisted on seeing written permission from the parents of everyone who’d brought a camera in.

  Then he wasted hours ringing up Trent Webster’s parents. He thought Trent’s note was forged just because ‘camera’ was spelt without an ‘e’ If he’d asked us we could have explained that Trent’s mum had to leave school when she was eleven to look after the goats.

  Then Raylene Shapiro put her hand up and said that her dad was wondering if the school insurance would cover damage to his camera.

  Mr Segal called Mr Fowler in and asked him.

  He said he’d check.

  I was adjusting Amanda’s camera strap at the time, and when Mr Fowler saw me with a camera in my hand he went visibly pale.

  Then, just when me and Amanda thought we could start shooting our in-depth report, Mr Segal announced that first we all had to write scripts.

  We did that for the rest of the day.

  It was a bit tricky because we didn’t want Darryn Peck to know we were writing about him, so we used a code name.

  Poodle.

  Mr Segal thinks we’re doing an in-depth report about dogs who are mean to cockatoos.

  At least writing the script gave me something to show Sticky when I got home. I don’t think he’d ever seen a current affairs script before because he tried to eat it.

  ‘Sticky,’ I said, ‘stop that. Don’t you want to be a star and an object of pity who’s allowed to sleep in my room again?’

  I don’t think he understood the hand movements because he just looked at me with his beak open.

  I wished I had Amanda there to explain it to him by mouth.

  Then I remembered what Mr Segal had said about pictures being more important than words. I pulled out my notepad and drew Sticky a picture of me playing the in-depth report to Dad and Ms Dunning on our video and them tearfully inviting Sticky to live with us in the house.

  He stared at it for ages and I could see his eyes getting moister.

  I drew him another picture, of Darryn Peck being arrested by RSPCA officers and sentenced to ten years hard labour cleaning out the dog pound.

  Sticky put his head under his wing and seemed a bit upset, so I reduced Darryn’s sentence to five years.

  It was the third picture that got Sticky really excited. I did it on two pages, and it showed our report being broadcast on telly, and people all over Australia who were about to abandon or neglect cockatoos thinking again.

  I put in a few people who were about to abandon or neglect other things as well.

  Dogs and cats.

  Hampsters.

  Kids.

  Those people were all thinking again too.

  Dad was one of them.

  ‘Bottom plops,’ said Sticky.

  Poor old Sticky, he finds it really hard to express his emotions.

  I know that inside he was just as excited and moved as I was.

  I never realised making in-depth current affairs programmes was so hard.

  For starters there’s focusing the camera properly and waiting for planes to fly over so they don’t mess up the sound.

  Then there’s asking the reporter if she’d mind changing her orange and purple striped T-shirt for a blue one and taking off the green eye shadow.

  And on top of all that there’s waiting for Ms Dunning to go into town for her check-up and Dad to go over to slash weeds at the other side of the orchard so you can do the introduction in the old shed without being sprung.

  No wonder it costs millions when the networks do it.

  We didn’t get started till nearly lunchtime.

  ‘OK,’ I said when the mail plane had finally disappeared and all we could hear was Dad murdering weeds in the distance, ‘camera going, take one.’

  Amanda stepped forward onto the spot I’d marked on the floor in front of Sticky’s cage.

  ‘This poor mistreated bird,’ she said in a loud clear voice, ‘has suffered some of the crookest treatment you could imagine.’

  ‘Pig’s bum,’ said Sticky.

  Amanda collapsed into giggles.

  ‘It’s just his way of agreeing with you,’ I said.

  Amanda collapsed into more giggles.

  Some reporters have no respect for their director.

  ‘Camera going, take two,’ I said.

  ‘This poor neglected bird . . .’ said Amanda.

  ‘Andy’s been sick in the fridge,’ said Sticky.

  Amanda laughed so hard she had to bite her clipboard.

  I could see it wasn’t going to be easy.

  I calmed myself down by telling myself that every TV current affairs show has a few of these sort of problems on the first day.

  An hour later I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Take thirty-two,’ I said, my hand aching.

  ‘This poor neglected . . .’ said Amanda.

  ‘Turnip,’ said Sticky.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ screamed Amanda. ‘Not with him interrupting. That’s it. I resign.’

  I sat Amanda down and got her a drink and while she was having it I showed Sticky the pictures again to remind him how important it was that he keep his beak shut.

  Then I held up four fingers to remind him that Ms Dunning’s having a baby in four days so we can’t afford to waste time.

  He stared at my fingers, tongue darting about in his beak.

  I knew how he felt. Thinking about it makes my mouth go dry too.

  Amanda came over and had a look at the pictures.

  She spent a long time staring at the people who had planned to aba
ndon cockies and hampsters and kids but were changing their minds.

  Then she looked at me and I could see her eyes getting moister.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Let’s try it again.’

  I didn’t say ‘Take thirty-three’ because I didn’t want to depress her. I just started the camera and waved.

  ‘This poor mistreated bird,’ said Amanda, ‘has suffered some of the crookest treatment you could imagine.’ She glanced down at her clipboard like a professional. ‘In tonight’s programme we talk to the boy who did it and doesn’t care. A boy who . . .’

  That’s when the battery ran out.

  I put the camera down so I’d have two hands to swear with, and Amanda explained that the camera had only come with one battery, and that it takes twelve hours to recharge.

  We didn’t waste the afternoon though.

  We spent it teaching Sticky some nice things to say to Dad and Ms Dunning when they invite him to join the family.

  It was hard work, but by the end of the afternoon he could say ‘G’day’ and ‘Pig’s bottom’.

  The battery should be charged in another six hours.

  It would be less, but Ms Dunning’s using heaps of electricity in the kitchen. She’s had the food processor going all evening, making a lemon and lime Jelly Custard Surprise for the Cake And Pudding section in the Agricultural Show on Saturday.

  I hope she wins because then she and Dad will be in the right frame of mind to watch a moving and thought-provoking in-depth current affairs report.

  OK, I admit it, filming Sticky up the tree was my idea, but if we hadn’t tried it we’d never have seen Darryn Peck drowning his parents in the creek.

  I had the idea this morning while I was doing the eggs.

  Why not have Amanda do the introduction in front of the tree where Darryn abandoned Sticky?

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  When Amanda arrived at the old shed she agreed.

  ‘Good thinking,’ she said. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’

  I put my hands over Sticky’s ears and gave her a look.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  When we got to the tree I climbed it with Sticky on my shoulder, put him on the branch, showed him the pictures, climbed down, focused the camera on Amanda and gave her a wave.