Expired

Expired
Mr. and Mrs. John Pratt rented out the garage behind their beach house every summer. One summer it would be a band of Bulgarian students, working on the boardwalks to send money back to their families. The next summer, the garage housed a small traveling Shakespearean theatre group performing at the Convention Center for the summer months. But this summer, no one had signed up tot rent from the Pratts, so they gave it to their grandsons, for free surfboard storage and, as they described it, a “teenage play pen” complete with 6 television channels and a stereo.
The boys had a great summer, strolling the boards and sleeping on the beach, only 6 feet away from the main house where their grandparents lived, but alone as well. ‘Dinner’ could be hot pockets and ice cream, if they wanted to ‘make it on their own’, or roast turkey and mashed sweet potatoes, if they wanted to knock on the backdoor.
Like most boys, the grandsons in the garage very rarely bothered their hosts for much more than home-cooked food, except for one particular rainy Sunday. The eldest, John Jr, knocked on the back door and asked his grandmother if they had a number for the local “pest” control—apparently the brothers were concerned there may be a trapped bird in the walls of the house.
John Jr. led his grandmother past the depressed carpet couch and newly upgraded television to the tiny kitchen area, and had her press her ear up against the refridgerator door.
“Yes I can hear it, John.” She said.
“He must be awfully cold in there.”
And with that, Mrs. Pratt opened the freezer door, and surveyed the half empty pints of ice cream and undisposed boxes of hot pockets.
“That’s surprising.” she said.
“Well perhaps we should call pest control.”
Animal Control of Rabid Pets and Other Such Peskeries came the next day, and though there were missing shingles and gaps all over the warped-board garage, they saw no bird feathers or imprints to indicate a winged animal had never been near the house. Though he did find where the particularly rank smell was coming from, which the boys did not complain about because they thought it would mean they had to clean up. Surprise surprise it was not the unwashed bodies of teenage boys, but the neighbor’s cat, Hercules, who had crawled under the foundation of the garage for warmth during the winter and electrocuted itself on the washing machine wire. Despite only a few hairballs and frazzled teeth marks left on the wire, the cat was easily identified by the mortified Pritchett family.
A few days passed and the Pratt’s got a knock on the backdoor again: the grandsons had found the root of the problem. Apparently Jesse had been walking past John Jr., on the way to the upstairs shower as he headed downstairs for a can of soda. John Jr. got in the shower and turned on the faucet, and just then Jesse heard the familiar bird-chirping noise coming from behind the fridge. Further investigation, he proudly told his grandmother, proved that the pipes from the shower ran back behind the fridge, thus the bird-chirping must be coming from a squeaky pipe!
“That must be one tiny bird, to fit in the drain pipe.” said Grandmother Pratt.
John Jr., and Jesse agreed.
The summer continued, and though Grandmother Pratt insisted on having her plumber friend come over and free the birds from the pipes, her two grandsons told her it was fine. They played along with her joke, saying they enjoyed the company of the birds, and they even sometimes chirped out the tie. Grandmother Pratt thought this was quite cruel of the boys, but they insisted they were fine with the current situation, and thanks to the freezer full of hot pockets, so were the birds.
The summer ended and the boys headed back to Washington, D.C. to go to school. Their thank you gift to their grandmother and grandfather for the wonderful summer was a newly planted bed of tulips, which (unbeknownst to the black-thumbed boys) their grandparents would never be able to enjoy, since they would die before Christmas.
Just a few weeks after the boys left, Mrs. Pratt invited Mr. Frances Pritchett over to the house for a glass of iced tea and a look at the damage the boy’s had done to the house this summer.
“The boys mentioned some problems with the plumbing.” said Mrs. Pratt.
Mr. Pritchett, as instructed, pressed his ear up against the freezer door, and heard the familiar chirping sound, but faint.
“Why it sounds like a bird is stuck in there!”
“Oh, really?” said Mrs. Pratt.
Mr. Pritchett opened the freezer door and out flew, or more flung, a small blue parakeet. Just like a ninja star it boomeranged across the room and it’s tiny, frozen beak got stuck in the wall plaster. Followed by seven other boomeranging, half-frozen ninja starred birds of different colors, they speckled the wall across from the freezer like splattered paint, stringing beads of frozen peas from their ankles and clumps of chocolate chunk from their tails. One particularly metal-headed bird got it’s entire head through the plaster, it’s tiny legs sticking out like fingerbones.
“How long has this been going on?” asked Mr. Pritchett, astonished.
Just as Mrs. Pratt was about to respond, the two heard a thud—a pelican with freezer burn had just fallen out of the freezer.
Mrs. Pratt’s eyes opened very wide.
“So long they’ve begun to change species.”