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He loved Mozart, melons and mirrors — though any shiny, reflective surface would do. And he never had a bad word to say about anyone, mostly because he never learned to talk.
He was, after all, a parakeet: our parakeet, Birdy. And though he was small enough to hold in your hand, he became a big part of our family after he crashed into our lives nine years ago.
We didn’t see him fall, but a neighbor found him. Driving down a suburban street, she saw a flash of yellow feathers and hit her brakes. The vet she took him to pronounced him young and healthy. When no one claimed him, she brought him to us.
We’d had parakeets several years before. Our last, Becky, was a pretty but neurotic little thing, nothing like her affectionate predecessor, Harry Potter. As we later found out, Teflon and birds don’t mix — the fumes nonstick skillets emit wreak havoc with a bird’s delicate respiratory system — and by the time we’d tossed the offending pans, it was too late.
And now here he was, bird No. 3, sitting stunned and silent on his perch. “Will you take him?” the neighbor asked. How could we not?
It took a few months, but Birdy — we’d run out of more original names by then — gradually came out of his shell. He no longer shook when we put a hand in his cage, and he climbed up and down his little ladder. When I played the violin, he started chirping along, especially to Mozart. One day, I felt a rush of air against my ear as I fiddled: Birdy had landed on my shoulder. He seemed to be eyeing the score.
With time — and lettuce — we trained him to hop onto a finger. But Birdy always preferred a shoulder on which to perch. At breakfast, he’d nuzzle up to my husband, Bruce, and preen his beard. Our son, Sam, learned to cover his oatmeal; I kept an eye on my coffee cup. If we weren’t careful, Birdy would dive headfirst into our water glasses.
So we bought him a birdbath, a little plastic tub with a mirrored bottom. But when we filled it with water, he screeched and fled to his highest perch. Perhaps he had seen “Sunset Boulevard.”
We emptied it and returned it to the cage, where it was a hit: Hand Birdy his plastic-mesh ball, and he’d pick it up with his beak and toss it into the tub. He started most days that way, jogging atop the ball as it rolled around the tub.
“Wow,” said our friend Lisa, who bird-sat whenever we went away. “I think he’s pleasuring himself!”
Maybe he was, but we suspected he was simply doing avian aerobics. At least he was never bored. He always found something to do — chirp, peck, climb or simply admire himself in a mirror.
Life became even more interesting with the arrival of Max, the cavachon puppy we found at a garage sale. (That’s a whole other story.) Max was mesmerized by Birdy: He eyed him raptly, the way you would a particularly juicy steak. And Birdy knew it, too. He kept his distance — flying high above Max’s head, chattering away. Eventually he’d stand on top of his cage, teasing Max, his head bobbing up and down — like a tiny feathered Ralph Kramden doing the Hucklebuck.
Max never caught him, but old age did. Or perhaps disease: A few weeks ago, one of Birdy’s feet stopped working. It flopped there as he clung valiantly, flamingo-like, to his perch. We started to feed him by hand, all his favorite things: lettuce, hard-boiled egg, melon. Still, he grew weaker.
The last time I covered his cage for the night, I reached in and stroked his chest. He put his beak to my finger and softly nibbled goodbye.
Emily Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers. For us, the thing with feathers was family.