On Wings and Prayers
A mockingbird’s crystal bel canto melts Ione MacMasters as she sits in the shade of magnolia and memories. Pigeons flutter, doves coo. A one-eyed duck nestles in the center of the backyard while a counterpart, Matilda, scruffy and headstrong, wobbles toward the ivy for privacy befitting the birthing of an egg.
Through wisdom that comes only with age, MacMasters, 77, has gathered in the boundaries of her life that which brings pleasure and peace: a rickety piano she calls her friend, this West Los Angeles home, and the company of birds and animals, many of whose broken legs and wings she has mended.
A cataclysm wasn’t required to change MacMasters, to cause her to shed ways that no longer fit into her scheme of what was important. Her life changed 18 years ago while she was mowing the lawn.
She had been cutting this same grass diligently for more than 30 years, so it wasn’t as if she had begun the day on a mission of self-discovery. But from the mundane emerged what proved to be an extraordinary moment: She saw a fallen bird in her flower garden.
“I saw this little-bitty naked sparrow. He’d fallen out of the tree and had crawled all the way across the lawn to the flower bed. I said, ‘You gutsy little devil.’ ”
And that is how it started.
She called the Audubon Society, which put her in touch with a woman who rescued birds. Along the way she met the Hummingbird Lady, the Hawk Lady, a small gaggle of bird rescuers. She read books and talked to veterinarians. Neighbors heard about the convalescing sparrow and brought her more. Soon, her garage was filled with as many as 55 birds at a time.
She has retired from the rigors of rescue work, but birds and other critters are still delivered to her doorstep, and she can’t turn them away. (About a dozen live with her at any given time.) She receives donations of old bread, but most of the other expenses come out of her own pocket.
A squirrel named Webster scurries helter-skelter in MacMasters’ garage, up and down cages and into everything like a hellbent child. Webster couldn’t have been more than 10 days old when he (later discovered to be she) arrived with “a broken arm.”
A male cockatiel named Barney and a soft brown rabbit named Carson have formed an enigmatic union. Since meeting a year ago, the two have become inseparable, seemingly not by Carson’s choice. Barney shadows the rabbit’s movement around the garage, sings to him gleefully and throws a feathery fit if his buddy is picked up.
Henry, a plump, white, blue-eyed rabbit stares straight ahead, resting motionless like a fluffy mannequin in a cage. “He’s anti-social,” MacMasters says. “He doesn’t like anybody.”
Seiko, a raven, lies on its back on a blanket, unable to lift itself with crippled legs. The last raven also was named after a watch, Elgin. In cages are baby mockingbirds, mourning doves and finches, opening wide their beaks in anticipation of vittles when they see the white-haired MacMasters slowly approach.
“Mockingbirds are God’s perfect birds,” she says. “They’re agreeable, they wean easily. They’re just heavenly, but I could live forever without those damn finches.”
She once performed CPR on a duckling, opening its beak, puffing three gentle breaths into it, then massaging its chest until it came around. “I did it on impulse,” she says. “Then afterward I asked myself what the hell I was doing giving CPR to a duck.”
She may not have done the same for an unruly rooster she once boarded. He became known as Edsel, like the car, “a big mistake.”
The chair beside MacMasters is death-like empty and still referred to as “Peggy’s chair.” Peggy was a dog of multiple breeds, including a shade of pit bull--not unlike MacMasters. For 11 years the two of them sat here in this sagging gazebo, rimmed by Christmas lights, half the bulbs beyond the age of glow. Peggy died suddenly two months ago.
Pseudo the Psiamese snoozes in her lap, but MacMasters is more of a dog person. She has applied to the Braille Institute to adopt a retired Seeing Eye dog. She chose the institute because it will take the dog back if she dies.
MacMasters is hoping not for a canine playmate but a pal who--like her--has seen enough of life to understand that you can travel beyond every bend in the road, climb mountains or chase sunsets, only to learn that peace of heart is found at home.
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This love of birds and animals gave MacMasters new vision to see the truly important things in life. Housekeeping wasn’t one of them.
“My house looks like it was stirred with a spoon,” she says. “There’s so much more to life than cleaning a stinking house.”
As her former self, she ironed her husband’s underwear and even the bedsheets, which always matched her pajamas.
“Miss Tidy,” is how her daughter, Sally Newton, describes her.
“Anal,” is the word MacMasters uses.
When her husband left in 1943 after five years of marriage, she tried to believe he would come back. She would look at a cactus in her yard and tell herself, “When this blooms, he’ll come back.” It took MacMasters 10 years to get over him, but she did; and 18 years later she married again. But that didn’t work out either.
Between marriages she put in long days as a switchboard operator and receptionist, then as an accountant.
After husband No. 2, she settled into this life of her own.
“I like to be alone a lot nowadays,” she says. “I didn’t when I was young, but now I prefer solitude, and I prefer animals to people. I don’t get much out of most people. They’re too shallow.”
She used to love to chat (“Telegraph, telephone, call Ione.”), but that, too, has changed. “If I have time, I’ll chat, but not for long. I don’t like long stuff, but I like happy stuff. I like young people better than people my own age. They’re alive, they’re full of imagination. They’re not sick. They don’t ask me what kind of pills I take.”
Between feedings, which she performs at hour-and-a-half intervals throughout the day, MacMasters preens her garden or sits quietly in the gazebo. She paints or works with stained glass. Sometimes she thinks about cleaning the house.
MacMasters tries to play the baby grand in her living room daily, perking herself up with a fix of “La Rosita.” The piano was old when her mother bought it for her for $300, paying it off over 90 days.
“I liked the action,” she says. “I didn’t like the looks, but I liked the action. It felt good. It’s like people. You don’t have to look good on the outside. It’s all busted and getting old and broken, but it’s my good friend.”
Her daughter, a Los Angeles County social worker, visits on Saturdays. They are closer now than ever. Then there are the three grandchildren and soon-to-be seven great-grandchildren, a sister in Seal Beach.
But mostly, her attention is given to the birds and animals. Once the birds are given a clean bill of health, they are generally released at a nearby cemetery, away from the neighborhood pets. Her heart still soars and aches to see them go.
Sometimes they return. Jake the raven flew in one day with a baby. “It was like he brought that baby for me to see.” A crow with a limp stops in from time to time.
MacMasters takes in fewer birds now. It’s still difficult to explain her love of them, except when she recites from her journal: “Yesterday, this place was a noise factory. Now it’s quiet. All the birds are gone, and it’s lonely.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “And it’s empty.”
