The Lord God Made It All

After many days of deliberation, we have decided to name our little no-name Mickey.  That way, if he turns out to be a she, we will only have to change the spelling from Mickey to Mikki. 

All of us love him.  Including Emily’s bird, Peter Pan, who is considerably older.  They are absolutely adorable together.

It’s hard to explain all the different ways people feel for their pets.  For some, it brings a sense of fulfilling responsibility.  You’re taking care of something that is completely dependent upon you, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see that animal thrive and respond to good treatment.  Another reason is maternal instinct (I’m speaking exclusively of women).  Women will buy a dog or a cat and treat it as their child.  Sometimes that can be a good thing; other times it can drive the animal crazy.  I have to confess, there is a little bit of maternal instinct behind what I feel for my cockatiel, Taralee.  After all, I bought her when she was only 2 weeks old, and raised her ( come to think of it, I did the same thing with my cat, Cloud, when his mother abandoned him at the tender age of 4 weeks). 

But there is another reason why people may seek out the company of animals. Some wish to befriend a creature that is utterly different from their experience with humanity; to be “friends” with a creature that is wild and free.  Such was my relationship with a little American parakeet named Pixie.

Pixie originally belonged to my sister, but after Kathy acquired Quaker parrot second hand, Pixie fell to me.  She had just recovered from a bad run-in with my cat, and was angry, confused and depressed.  She didn’t want to be handled, she hated people, and she spent most of her time huddled in a corner of her cage.  In my way, I had just as big a challenge before me as my sister did trying to re-tame an abused parrot.  Through the process of gaining Pixie’s trust, I learned almost everything I know about handling parrots.  This tiny little urchin taught me all.

The reason why I would claim that parrots are “wild” is that they have not been domesticated like dogs, or even cats.  They retain all the instincts and behaviors of their wild counterparts, and part of owning a bird is learning how to manage, but not eliminate those behaviors.  The bird adopts its owner as its surrogate mate in many ways.  This sense of freedom and independence even in captivity is part of the lure of birds, and I came to fully know this during those first few weeks of taking care of Pixie.  And once I gained her trust the return was astounding.  Pixie wanted to be with me everywhere all the time, 24-7.  When I had to spend long hours upstairs nursing a sprained ankle, Pixie was there with me.  When I played my recorder for an hour each evening, Pixie would be sitting on my shoulder, singing along.  When I lifted the cage cover, she would greet me with, “Good morning, Karen!  How are you?”  Yes, she knew me by name, something I didn’t teach her.  And she knew many more words, and would use them in a shockingly intelligent fashion, almost as if she understood what she was saying. 

A week and a half ago, when Kathy lost her English Budgie Darcy to a heart attack, I remember walking into my room and noticing that my 4-year-old parakeet wasn’t talking. In fact, she had been uncharacteristically silent all day.  She looked really sick.  Or was it her age?  I remember thinking, “I wonder if I’m going to lose her too.”  Prophetic thoughts.  None of us knew that Pixie had developed the avian version of colon cancer.  In exactly one week, she deteriorated to the point where we had to put her down.  To let her live longer would’ve been irresponsible, and she would have died a horrible death.  The day before we took her to the vet, I had all but figured out that she was suffering from something serious, and I dreaded the outcome.

 I had lost a friend.

Last Wednesday, after Pixie’s funeral, the whole family exhibited various degrees of depression.  To my surprise, I was actually more upset before Pixie’s death than afterwards.  Maybe it was because there was a sense of closure, and I knew she wasn’t suffering anymore.   However, I still felt lost with my room suddenly devoid of budgie chatter.  My sister Emily, who often helped me with Pixie (http://familybuildingworkshop.com/Karen/2008/07/28/little-imp/), was also unhappy.  So… I suggested buying another budgie to teach Emily how to train.  This time, instead of buying from Petco, we would purchase the bird from the Kookaburra Bird Shop (http://kookshop.com/Site/Welcome.html), the same place where we bought our cockatiels last year.

They had a delightful assortment of baby budiges available.  Greens, blues, a violet, yellowfaces, pastels, everything you can imagine.  Emily fell in love with this little pied green, and since he/she seemed to have a fairly good personality, I approved the choice.  But there was a problem…

There was a yellow budgie, a tiny, baby budgie, that I had totally fallen in love with.  Mom discovered this after we brought the green budige home, and she and Dad took me all the way back across the city so we could buy him (or her).

This little blondie bird has an unusually sweet personality rather similar to Taralee’s (pictured with it).  Already “he” is relatively hand-tame, and is already greeting me with a wing stretch or a tail wag when I come over to talk to “him” in the cage.  Emily’s little pied piper is a little more cautious (it bit Kathy hard when she tried to be friendly), but as of this morning appears to be friendlier.   I think my bird is a dark-eyed clear, which means that his eyes will remain dark even after maturity.  If he is a male, the nose will remain a  pink/purple hue; if a female the nose will turn brown. (For information on budgie colors, click this link: http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html).

Eventually, I want to put these two in a cage together.  Tara benefited greatly from Pixie’s presence this summer, and I don’t like leaving her alone when I can’t be with her.  I’m also hopeful that this one will be a talker.  Most budgies learn a few words, but a few, like Pixie, can amass huge vocabularies in a short time.  The Guinness World Record for the bird with the largest vocabulary is a budgie named Victor. 

We have yet to name the birds.  Emily wants to call hers Peter Pan or Tinkerbell, depending on what gender the bird turns out to be.  I haven’t decided on a name yet for mine.  Some that have been suggested to me are Omelet and Highlighter, and I threw the name Tropicana around in my mind this morning.  We’ll have to see…

My room seems a lot cheerier now that I have those pretty budgie warbles serenading me every hour.  But I miss Pixie’s “Good morning, Karen!” everytime I lift the covers off the cage.  I guess you never do forget the first one.