Bird brains - or, the second bird trial

Following the defeat of the Bellairean Bird Brain, I figured I was free from big bird for quite some time.

Oh, how foolish I was!

Only a few short weeks after the Bird Bath in Bellaire, I was, again, MINDING MY OWN DAMNED BUSINESS....

All of these bird stories start with an anxious, breathless, panicked phone call.

Anxious, breathless, panicked phone calls convey several things:

• A lack of prior planning or consideration as to outcomes
• The failure of efforts based on bluster, bluff, aggressiveness or combativeness to resolve a situation
• An ongoing effort to skirt rules, laws, regulations, common decency or just plain politeness that comes to disaster
• Running home to Momma to have her fix it all by defending your side without question

Back in the days before Caller ID and wireless phones, answering the phone was always an adventure.

"Hello, this is Doug Hord" (I answer the phone in the same way my dad does, but somehow without his commanding, confident tone in my own judgment of such things).

(insert shrieking, panicked, breathless verbiage from recent bird shop client)

"Now, , just calm down - 'WHAT' happened?"

Something along the lines of her having been sued in small claims court for ownership or damages for a bird she had rescued (on TeeVee!) from the roof of a building near the Houston Galleria.

I was then regaled with the extensive, vile, rich history of the Plaintiff's perfidy.  It seems that not only was he a bird smuggler, but also a card sharp, a villian, a Communist, a wife-beater, and he didn't timely change his motor oil.

In the opinion of my client, "He needs killin'" (as we say here in Texas).

Let's skip the pre-trial discussions (in which my client explained at every turn WHY he needed killin'), and skip right to the trial, in the courtroom of the Right Honorable Justice of the Peace (Precinct 5, place 2) Wm. Yeoman.

I have enormous respect for Judge Yeoman; in my many visits to his courtroom, I've only known him to be skilled, clear, polite, respectful and able to withstand the tirades of those who expect his courtroom to be far more Judge Judy.

Our trial setting was for the late shift - we were called hours in advance to advise us that the court would have limited seating room, as so many inquiries from "interested parties" had been received.

Uh, what was that?

I had, as witnesses, only my client, her manservant and myself.  What interested parties?

It turns out that there's an enormous sub-rosa community of bird lovers who communicate via tom-tom signals, and they were (basically) ALL flying in to watch the epic battle of the two most powerful forces in Southeast Texas Bird-dom.

The issue at hand was, simply, this:

My woman, being the pre-eminent bird lady in the area, received a call from a distressed bird person who had observed a bird of the exotic variety on top of a tree/bush/aerial/roof of a commercial building.  No amount of persuasion nor shiny object was luring the bird down from its aerie. 

An emergency situation!  They fired up the Isuzu pickup and dashed over with bird toys, lures and a ladder.

And, they recovered the bird.  ON TEEVEE!

Through the magic of television, the progenitor of bird-dom's Dark Side learned that this bird had been rescued, believed it to be his (without having identified the bird, seen the bird other than on his 27" CRT television set, or inquired of my client) and brought suit in small claims to recover the bird's VALUE.

You could think of this as a "cash grab".

Again, we were commanded to produce the egg laying vermin in open court.

Things moved fairly swiftly in this courtroom drama.  The Plaintiff laid on his case - primarily grounded in that my client was dishonest, lies, smoked filterless cigarettes and drank straight bourbon, kept her thumb on the scale and generally was a Loose Woman.  And, she had his bird.

His bird was of one of the sexes, her bird was (she testified) of the other.

There were, no kidding, seventy-five plus people in the courtroom.  It was JAMMED.  Everyone wanted to pitch in and testify (for one side, or both), even though not one of them knew a damned thing about that particular bird's identity.  They did wish, though, to carry on at great length about the looseness of my client, and/or the evilness and bird snatchery of the Plaintiff.

Cutting through all of this like a gentle but firm laser was Judge Yeoman, who indicated that he'd consulted the Veterinary College up to the A&M, had learned that only a surgical sexing could positively identify the bird, told those assembled that smart people would have their birds microchiped or tatooed, and sent everyone home with their licks.

Meaning, my woman didn't recover attorney's fees from the probably asset-less Plaintiff.  My fee's being paid was now sketchier than the first gig.

However, the Plaintiff complimented me as we left the courthouse, and asked if I'd work for him in the future.

Mercifully, the State Bar rules would frown on such an arrangement.  I was off the hook - temporarily.

For, bad things happen in threes, you know - and the THIRD bird trial was a mess of epic proportions.

Come back to read about trial number THREE and my being called out as the bird lawyer in court on a case NOT involving birds.