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Pets, companions, stories
A fallen Budgie
By William Bedford
Monday, October 30, 2006
Birds have always fascinated me. I remember, as a kid, lying on my back in the meadow, watching a hawk circle slowly in the blue sky until, spotting a field mouse, it would dive, lightning fast into the tall grass and reappear seconds later with its prey imprisoned in its deadly talons.
I used to take care of birds that I found limping around the barn suffering from shotgun wounds. I remember once nursing a wounded mallard back to life. It stayed with me for more than a year, then one day it flew away forever. Whether it found a mate or fell to another hunter's gun, I'll never know.
Birds of all seasons are a joy to behold: Chirping robins in the spring, swans gliding on a summer pond, the flash of pheasants in the fall, gulls swirling on a wintry shore. But birds in cages are another matter. As far as I was concerned, birds and cages were mutually exclusive. At least, that's the way I saw it until Joey came into my life.
It all began innocently enough. My wife and I strolling around a small town when we happened on a pet store that had some budgies in a big cage in the window. As we watched them flitting from perch to perch, one of them caught my wife's attention. With its deep purplish wings and snow-white head and breast, it was a beauty for sure. My wife decided there and then that she had to have that bird. "It would be," she said, "her Christmas present to herself." Well, I had something to say about that, I'll tell you. And I said it in no uncertain terms. "It would be a frosty Friday in July," I said, "before I would have a caged bird in the house." "Case closed!" I said.
Anyway, my wife purchased the budgie plus a cage and a few boxes of birdseed, and that was that. As soon as we arrived home, my wife, being nothing if not original, named her new pet, Joey. When she opened the cage door to put a small mirror inside, Joey came out like a Kamikaze pilot, flying into first, the wall, then the door, and then the buffet. In fact, he flew into anything that looked solid. He seemed bent on committing suicide, and I secretly hoped he'd succeed. "Better dead than caged," I thought.
My wife decided to leave Joey's cage door open so that he could come and go as he pleased. After that he would only enter his cage to eat and drink. He even slept on top of it. All the attention my wife showered on her pet turned out to be in vain. In spite of all her efforts he just didn't take to her, but for some unknown reason decided that I was going to be his buddy. In spite of myself, I fell slowly under Joey's spell, and as the weeks went by he and I became inseparable. He would nestle on my shoulder while I read the paper and perch on the edge of my glass whenever he wanted a drink. He also loved to shower while I washed my hands in the bathroom sink. His top favorite sport, however, was riding on my razor while I shaved. You haven't lived until you've shaved with a budgie perched on your razor.
While Joey and I were having all this fun, my wife took care of the other stuff, like cleaning his cage and supplying him with fresh food and water. One evening, Joey went into his cage and wouldn't come out no matter how I coaxed him. He refused all food and water. Being an expert on budgies by this time, I figured Joey was just having an off day, like we all have from time to time. Just leave him alone, and he'd be right as rain by tomorrow. When I got up the next morning, Sunday, the first thing I did was check on Joey. He was lying on the floor of his cage. He was dead. Without waking my wife, I took Joey out of his cage, put him in a small box, went outside and buried him. When I returned, my wife was fixing breakfast. After telling her about Joey's funeral we watched the news while we sipped our coffee, as was our usual custom on holidays and weekends.
The news from around the world was the same old litany of horrors: widespread famine in Africa. Mindless slaughter in Sudan. Chaos in the Middle East. And here at home, in the midst of plenty, more food-banks than ever and more customers lining up for them. With so much suffering in the world, the death of a budgie sure seemed like pretty small stuff indeed. So someone's budgie dies on a Sunday morning? So what! Who the hell cares? Who'll miss a lousy budgie, anyway?
I will.
