06E132
RACING
CANARIES
Recently I met a fellow in my
building at work for the first time and as we were both heading for the
elevator I engaged him in conversation about his interests outside the
workplace.
“I raise canaries,” he said.
That’s not what I heard,
though. I thought he said that he raced
canaries.
“You race canaries?” I said with
mild surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “A lot of guys in this area raise canaries.”
At this point I was struggling to
envision what a canary racetrack looked like.
“Do you race them outdoors?” I
enquired.
“No, I raise them in my basement,”
he said.
Still clueless, I tried to make
sense of this new piece of information.
I pictured a smoky den filled with canary owners betting on the outcome
of the next race.
“Do you use an enclosed track?” I
asked in all sincerity, assuming that you couldn’t train canaries to
independently fly in an oval path.
“Yes, I have wire cages,” he said
which made perfect sense if you raise canaries rather than race them.
I, on the other hand, pictured a
giant, enclosed, wire-mesh, oval track suspended from his basement
ceiling. I also pictured a whole
subculture of canary racers much in the fashion of dogsled owners. If people can race dogs or even pigeons, I
reasoned, why not canaries?
The elevator stopped at my floor and
I got off, my mind still reeling with visions of the third race at the canary
equivalent to Churchill Downs. A
co-worker who witnessed the entire exchange with glee clued me in to my mistake
and brought me back to reality.
“Racing canaries” made a great tale
for a couple of days. But after awhile,
I started wondering. If I hadn’t gotten
off that elevator, how much longer would our conversation in parallel universes
have gone on? Was there a limit? How far into canary racing wonderland would
I have descended? Unfortunately, I’ll
probably never know.