Dear Ajja,
I am thrilled to know you will soon be visiting us at my new home in Tucson (pronounced Tew-sawn). I wish you could stay for my 10th and Alina's 4th birthday in December, but Mom says you cannot.
Your last visit to our home was 3 years ago when we lived in Santa Barbara, California, and I think you will find Arizona, being a desert region, a very different kind of place. Despite the warm weather, all of us - Alina, Dad, Mom and I - love this place. We share our lives with several wild animals like the puma and coyote and though they are not generally troublesome to humans, they occasionally create a scare by targeting small domestic pets. They usually hunt at night and just as a matter of precaution, we avoid getting out late in the evening, unless we are traveling in a car. I had a very interesting experience recently, which Mom thinks I should share with you.
In one of the bushes of my home lived a family of quails (Mom says they are called 'Teetar' in India), Dad Quail (DQ), Mom Quail (MQ) and five babies. They would feed on worms, seeds and insects early every morning in our premises and as if by instinct, would go everyday to the open fields across the road from our house in the afternoon. I never tired of seeing them march across the road, DQ leading the line, the babies following him one behind the other, and MQ bringing up the rear. Occasionally a car or a truck went zooming by, but DQ seemed to know that he must wait until the road was free of any traffic before he could cross! DQ also seemed to know that he must bring the family back home before it gets dark, so all of them would troop in, in a reverse sequence, by 5 p.m.
One Saturday, when DQ was waiting to take his brood for the afternoon feed, a particularly noisy truck roared by and one of the baby quails got so scared that he (I really do not know if he was a he or a she, but I will use 'he' in this narration!) ran right back towards his home. For the first time I saw him attempting to fly and noticed that he flew not straight, but in an arc, landed some 3 or 4 feet away, took off again after running a few steps, crash-landed once more and disappeared into the garage. Unaware of this turn of events, DQ marched off to his hunting ground with the rest of the family. Alina and I searched for a while in the garage, but with no result. I was about to give up when the baby quail let out a soft squeak and I eventually saw him between a set of tyres, shivering with fright.
I told my Dad about the baby bird and he eventually retrieved him. He examined the little bird and said he had a broken wing and that is why he could not fly straight. Alina heard only the 'broken wing' part of the conversation and piped in "Is his name Boken Ing?'. "No, silly" I said, "he has no name", but my Dad laughed and said, "Let's call him Boken Ing, why not?'. It was thus that the baby quail was christened Boken Ing. I stroked him gently and gave him some corn and rice to eat, but he was too terrified to eat, so I left him near his bush. Some time later his Dad, Mom and siblings returned for a happy family reunion.
The following Saturday Boken Ing surprised me by breaking off from his line to 'visit' me briefly as I stood in the porch; he rejoined the others after I cupped him in my hands, kissed him and stroked him a few times! This became a ritual every Saturday - maybe it would have been every day, if I did not have to go to school. Whenever Alina was around, she too would pet him similarly.
In due course Boken Ing became bolder and would visit our swimming pool for a quick dip once in a while, although no other member of his family did so. He grew in size a little bit, but his short-hop flight remained skewed.
My interest in quails was aroused by Boken Ing and I asked my Mom to tell me all she knew about quails. She told me that quails belong to the family of pheasants and live almost everywhere in the world, are generally grey and brown, though the Asian Blue quail, the most colorful of them all, is endowed with stunningly iridescent blue and red feathers. Quails breed frequently, laying some 5-7 eggs in every clutch. Their lives are spent almost entirely on the ground, because they can't fly more than some 8 or 10 feet at a time. The call of the Virginian quail sounds as though someone is saying 'Bob White'. Mom told me also that the US Vice President Dick Cheney fell foul of the American public by going on a quail hunt, back in February 2006 - my Mom felt angered too, for quails are actually harmless birds, eating only seeds that have fallen off plants, and insects that can destroy crops. Another tid-bit my Mom gave me was that the US biosatellite Cosmos 1129 carried quail eggs into space for research purposes! (Just imagine, quail eggs went where most of us don't get to go!)
Then it started to happen. One Saturday a sibling of Boken Ing did not come back after the afternoon feed; some days later another went missing and another and another, till Boken Ing was the only one left. With wild animals around, I imagined the worst every time a baby quail disappeared and cried, but my Mom said baby birds go away just after a few weeks of parental care to make their own homes, just as Mom and Dad left their parents many years ago. I was mentally prepared to 'lose' Boken Ing too, but surprisingly it was the parents who moved out, leaving Boken Ing to continue to live with us. Mom said their bird-instinct might have told them to move out to save the 'handicapped' Boken Ing the trouble of having to move!
That was some months ago. Boken Ing is now gone too, and Mom thinks it is possible that Boken Ing was actually a girl, who decided to pair up with a boy in his home - she suspects so, because male quails build nests and invite the girls to approve and move in! I hope it is true, and that one day Boken Ing will turn up to show off her own new family to us! How nice it will be, if it happens when you are here!
See you soon.
Love - Anya
