This chapter opens with a description of a new bird house that has just been opened. The narrator tells us that birds have been popular as pets in the past, but that they have also been developed using genetic manipulation. The bird house is described as a "bird - person" , which means that the bird can take on both a human and a bird. This was a very popular form of breeding and raising birds, but the government banned the practice because it was thought that birds were "forward" .