Frank J. Tassone
Montebello, New York, USA

A Quart-milk Container Bird Enthusiast

It is a pretty bird.

An Arts and Crafts instructor at Woodland camp showed us how to make them out of quart-milk containers. She dips papier mache wrapping into different colored dyes to make the foliage. Then she wraps the papier mache around the container.

She walks around the paint-splattered tables in the cavernous, beige-painted room with the cathedral windows, monitoring our progress. Every so often, she gives one “bird” a slight tug, or another a snip of excess foliage.

We place our creations on trays near the window to dry when we finish.

I love mine so much that I want to make more. For the next month, I smuggle quart-milk containers home.

Until I fill an entire drawer in my room.

But I never made another bird.

swooping hawk
nowhere near a landfill
holding our birds