By Tobin Barnes“Chachalaca!” cries the Chachalaca bird of Central and South America.
I’ve never been around a Chachalaca bird, but from what I’ve read, when it has something to say, the Chachalaca bird says, “Chachalaca!”
In other words, some things are appropriately named.
By that token, there must also be a Heeheehee bird. It makes a high-pitched, piercing “Heeheehee” sound when amused--even when only mildly amused.
I discovered this strange creature when it flew into a packed movie theatre and perched beside me at a showing of “Marley and Me.” Because I was sitting at the end of a long line of relatives, there was no escape.
Chances are you may have seen “Marley and Me” by now. It’s been a big ticket-seller all across the country. But you didn’t see it the way I did. Not with a Heeheehee bird next to you.
(If you haven’t seen the movie and want to be held in suspense, skip the next five or six paragraphs until the Heeheehee bird flutters back into the column.)
“Marley and me” is a dog movie, and I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag when I tell you that the dog dies. You knew it even before I told you. That’s because the dog always dies in a dog movie, or at least someone dies. Sometimes it’s the master, but mostly the dog.
Dog movies are always weepers.
But they’re good weepers. “Cathartic,” as they say in literature classes. They make you feel better for having wept for a dog who was bound to die anyway because it’s a dog movie.
On the other hand, the dog never dies in dog TV shows. Timmy might be replaced with Jimmy, but the dog lives on, even if it takes twenty dogs to replace him.
Therefore, Lassie’s going to be perpetually reincarnated and have adventures well into the next century.
In the movie I went to, Marley’s death is the second most devastating thing to happen to his owner’s family right after the wife’s miscarriage in her first pregnancy, but definitely ahead of a fairly severe case of exhaustion after the delivery of her second child.
So Marley--often described as the “worst dog in the world” and therein providing the movie with a continual font of humor, that is, until he starts dying--is central to this family’s existence during the fourteen-year span of the plot.
“Marley and Me” is a fine-enough confection of a movie with all the requisite tears and chuckles and flapdoodle you’d expect from paying seven bucks. It’s a good family-date-general-purpose-have-a-nice-time movie. There aren’t going to be any Oscar handouts on this one, but people will enjoy it nonetheless.
Unless, perhaps, they are sitting next to a Heeheehee bird, as I was.
This Heeheehee bird was female. (I shudder to think of the male variety.) She’d Heeheehee at the slightest drop of humor, even when no one else in the crowded theatre was provoked to laughter. (The preening Heeheehee bird evidently likes to attract a lot of attention to itself and those sitting next to her. Thank goodness theaters are dark.)
Heeheeheeing when no one else gave a “Ha!” is certainly excusable, but it was the nature of the Heeheeheeing that drove me to near barking mad. It was, unfortunately, something like this: “Hee...hee...hee...hee.......hee......hee........hee (wait for it) hee!” I kid you not.
The movie became a secondary experience for me compared to cringing in expectation of the next outburst from the exotic bird sitting next to me.
And to put an even finer point on the tip of the stiletto, she was also a talking bird.
“Isn’t that cute?” she’d ask the general vicinity seated around her. And, yes, it was kinda cute, though I didn’t feel compelled to answer her query, nor did anyone else.
Or “That’s funny!” she’d say. And again, yes, it was kinda funny. But didn’t we all know that?
And “Isn’t that sad?” she asked towards the end of the movie.
Yes, sad indeed. But I’ve learned more about coping with difficulty, thanks to you.
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