(xvii)

In the dilapidated old house, a small bird called the eaves bird often flies through the cracks to be with us and share the food that is not very abundant. They build their nests and breed in the cracks of the veneer on the roof, and I often wait with my friends in the pavilion for an afternoon to see which gap the birds fly into, and then wait until it gets dark to block the nests and dig out the eggs, but the clever birds are not fooled. Many times, the birds did not wait, but we fell asleep in the pavilion.

The old house is made of cedar veneer instead of tile, and it has to be renovated every year or two. Every time my father "raided the house", he always brought us some surprise, or one or two birds' eggs, or a bird with plump plumage.

The eggs are too small to be boiled and eaten, so they are stuffed under the belly of the old hen in the hen's nest, while the birds must be raised by themselves.

Raising birds has almost become the most unforgettable childhood memory of children in the mountains.

The first thing I do after school is to go to the pavilion to watch the birds. The parents of the birds could not move the nest or take the birds away, but they still stayed with them and circled the nest all day. After discovering that I had no ill intentions, they took on the feeding of the birds with me.

After eating a big bowl of green pepper rice, I go around digging for eels, catching insects, or going to the rice bucket to smooth a handful of rice. In short, being able to feed the birds gives me a great sense of accomplishment.

But often in the middle of the afternoon, the fledgling bird was taken away by its parents, and I was always angry for days.

As soon as the eggshell comes out, it has to make a nest for it, use a kind of fluffy manganese to cushion the bottom, and then steal into the parents' quilt and pull out a ball of cotton to cover the bird, so as to prevent the bird from freezing to death at night. Every day, you have to use a small wooden stick to clean the droppings in the nest.

The birds initially ate only half of an earthworm and the soft belly of the grasshopper, but slowly swallowed it whole, and ate more and more of it. When I go to school, I just have enough food to get the birds to eat as soon as I get back from school.

In the heart and mind, the little bird slowly grew up.

Hatching chicks can be raised until they become adults, and they are reluctant to fly away. But I don't have much interest in growing birds, so I leave it alone when it can fly away.

When I was about seven or eight years old, the birds suddenly migrated and disappeared without a trace.

It's really not white, why do little birds have big gatherings, and they will resolutely leave the places where generations have lived for decades or centuries.

It wasn't until I left the village that the eaves bird didn't come back.

"I'm afraid the way of the world is about to change!" The old people of Wendouzhai said.

Indeed, in those years of reform and opening up in our country, new things continued to pour into that small village, and the atmosphere of a village was new. People began to know that there was a much bigger and more wonderful world outside the mountain than Wendouzhai,......

And the young and strong people on the village, as long as they have a little way and livelihood skills, or have a brute force, they have also left the village one after another to seek another fresh livelihood outside the mountain.

The eaves birds never returned to the village again, perhaps they had long forgotten the way to the village.

But people who went out to work kept coming back, dyed blonde hair, dressed in fancy clothes, and bell-bottoms that had never been seen before, and walked down the street with a tape recorder as if no one was around, playing a kind of gentle, lingering music,......