Behaviour Modification
Heger spent some pre-dawn hours that morning trying to coax the bird down from the palm tree. He stood in the front yard with one arm raised above his head, offering an index finger as a perch. The bird was a black Myna given to Heger a week earlier by his girl friend Geraldine. The Myna supposedly had a large vocabulary but other than some occasional squawks, it had yet to utter a single word. Heger had named it Joe and during that first week had tried to get the bird to say something. Speaking in a ridiculous sing-song meter, Heger had repeated the phrase "Hello Joe" several million times to no avail.
One afternoon the bird got loose, made its way out side and settled in the palm tree. Heger initially figured the bird was long gone but around three in the morning he could hear some squawks that he thought sounded familiar. All of which led to Heger being stationed in the front of the house like the statue of liberty and calling out "Hello Joe" over, and over, and over. After a few hours Heger called it quits and went back to bed. That was the last any of us saw or heard of the first bird.
Heger and Gerben had rented the house in the mid 1960s while attending USC. It was on 35th place about a block and a half from campus. The neighborhood then was just as lethal as it is now but it was convenient and affordable. Hartwig had moved in at some point and I spent many a night on the couch.
After giving the situation a good mulling over, Heger decided later that day to replace the bird. Geraldine had been so excited when she gave it to Heger he didn't have the heart to tell her it was gone. After all, no one can tell one Myna from another, and what Geraldine didn't know could't hurt her. Heger came back from the pet store with a new black Myna, placed it in the cage, and went back to chanting the "Hello Joe" mantra.
A day later, bird number two was tits up on the bottom of the cage. It may sound callous but everyone other than Heger thought this was hilarious. What followed the death of bird number two may seem a little insensitive but that's often the case with ill-conceived practical jokes.
I don't remember how it got started but every few days one of us would climb into bed, slide down between the sheets toward the foot of the bed, only to be greeted by bird number two. Once or twice a week the latest victim would spring out of their bed screaming and cursing while the culprits laughed themselves to sleep. Following each dead-bird strike, the perpetrators would try to remember to carefully inspect their beds and pillow cases before climbing in but would eventually let their guard down. Those that had placed the bird in another's bed could hardly contain their glee while waiting for the unsuspecting poor bastard to hop into bed. A scenario of ongoing tit-for-tat vendettas continued well beyond anyone's expectations, ending only when the carcass became too vile for us to deal with.
The next-door neighbors on the west side of the house had two small dogs that never left their back yard. The dogs both had incredibly sharp annoying barks. During our waking hours we couldn't have cared less as we generated a good bit of noise ourselves. However, on those nights when you were in bed without the bird, the dogs could make sleeping impossible. Something would invariably set them off and they would commence with a non-stop, rapid-fire barking frenzy that seemed to have no end.
Heger brought over a BB gun from his parent's house one afternoon and thus begins the part of this story where I need to advise PETA members to skip this paragraph. Heger spent the next few days conducting an experiment with the neighbor's dogs that would have impressed B.F. Skinner. Every time they launched into a bark fest, Heger would grab the BB gun, go out the noisy screen door to the backyard, and fire a BB against the flank of one of the dogs. The dog that was hit would yelp, but then they both would dive under the neighbor's house and remain quiet for at least an hour. It was an old gun with not much oomph left and the BB never even broke the dogs' skin. Getting hit with a BB from this gun at 30 feet was no more than a being whacked with a rolled-up newspaper.
It wasn't long until the BB gun was no longer required. After a few days the dogs had become sufficiently terrified by the opening of the screen door that the sound alone sent the dogs scurrying for safety. Heger now had a humane method for quieting the dogs at night but he didn't relish having to get out of bed and going outside every time he wanted some quiet.
To remedy this drawback Heger strung a nylon chord from above his bed to the screen door. When the dogs started up after he was in bed, Heger had only to reach up and pull on the cord. The sound of the screen door swinging open never failed to silence the dogs and send them into hiding.