I knew a bird lady in Papua New Guinea. She wasn’t the Mary Poppins bird lady, or the bird lady from Home Alone 2 who found a substitute for human company in Central Park pigeons, nor was she an animal hoarder with 20 birds in her house. She was a bird lady because she sounded like a bird and, well, the nickname stuck. Every syllable, every utterance, every single sound coming from her was sharp, quick, and incredibly piercing. As I reflect on her, I think my memory has attributed more aviary characteristics to her than may be fair. For instance, in my memory when she walked she would stroll slowly with her thin fingers interlocked behind her back. Her movements were slow and deliberate, and her head jutted out as she looked at the ground. That stance gave her the essence of a bird deep in thought, wings relaxed on it’s back. Her eyes were darting and beady; her hair a bit wild. Her laughing always involved hopping. Whatever is actually true in regards to the Bird Lady, my memory will never fail me in how timely her antics were.

She lived across the large path from me and my colleague, Jo*, in a bamboo house that mirrored ours. In the five weeks we spent across from her, I could never quite figure her story out. I wasn’t really motivated to try, either, because she scared me with her quick movements and unpredictable cackle. This was my first true experience in a Papua New Guinean village and it’s where I would start the separation from my home culture. The time I spent in that village is something I can never explain to others; not to my family, not to my closest friends at home, not to anyone who wasn’t there. It’s an experience so wholly mine it makes me feel small and lonely.

To say I started the venture stressed is an understatement. I bared many ugly bits of myself to Jo and learned exactly how defiant I can be about the most inane things. The pressure of succeeding (whatever that was defined as, I’m still not sure) and my “need” to please our adopted family crashed in on me over and over again, giving way to raw emotions. There were lots of tears and bitterness sometimes pointed directly at Jo, but our small gift of comic relief rarely failed to appear. She was terrifying in her birdness, but her memory still serves as a reminder to me that God puts personalities, strange and normal, in our lives for a reason.

My favorite Bird Lady memory stems from one of those moments when I was downright cranky. It was the middle of a blazing hot afternoon. Jo and I were cleaning the blue linoleum we put on the bamboo floors of our two room house, listening to all the people come home from the garden. In general, we tried our best to look competent and capable. Most of the time we failed miserably, but we did try hard. The huge brown house spiders were the only thing that got us flustered to the point of not caring what anyone thought; in our battle against these behemoths, we threw pride to the wind. We hated them with their long legs, fat bodies, and glassy eyes. Hated.

The worst thing about them was their ability to lurk in the open, surprising us as we reached for food or supplies. Every time that happened it felt like stubbing your toe. I don’t remember who saw the spider in the wall first, but as soon as it was located the chase was on. I was never clear whether we were chasing them or they were chasing us. With great courage, we sprayed the entire wall with Mortein (a chemical that turns their bodies into something resembling an alien), only to lose it between the bamboo reeds. The only thing worse than a known spider is a known spider in unknown locations. We ran quietly onto the porch trying to finish the job discreetly. The spider was definitely somewhere between the inside and the outside, we just didn’t know where. It’s possible that our preteen girl shrieks were louder than we intended. It’s also possible we were as quiet as mice. Either way didn’t matter for the Bird Lady; she always had her police scanner on, waiting for us to do something stupid. Before we knew it she had hopped over with her three year old perched on her shoulders. We tried to explain the situation to her adding lots of, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” but all she heard was, “PANIC!!!”

Bouncing from one foot to the other, she yelled for our adopted father to come save his white daughters from the monster in their house. Convinced bad things were happening, Papa came roaring out of his house waving a bush knife, determined to take care of us. Sadly, the “monster” he was taking care of was just one spider. One small spider in his estimation. During this interval, the Mortein finally had the chance to take it’s toll on the spider. Jo, myself, the Bird Lady, and our adopted father with his bush knife poised watched (two of us with embarrassed dismay) as the spider dropped to the ground out of the house, twitching. The Bird Lady stared at it for a second, started her hop-laughing, and squished it with her bare feet.

Can you find the spider?

 

There it is!! Ugh.

Jo and I still laugh about that incident and the look on the Bird Lady’s face when she saw the source of our drama. It was… birdlike. More than that I see the Bird Lady as an example of God’s creativity. He plopped us into a village as her neighbor and gave us the privilege of seeing all the different types of people He shapes.

*Name changed