11 July 2010
Today we spent cleaning our home. We finished up the bedroom and one of the bathrooms. They’re spotless and all ready for the baby. We even took two bags of stuff to the goodwill. I always like doing that as it means more room in the house.
I’m pleased that the house is in such good shape and that we’ve finished everything we needed to finish before the baby arrives.
This evening, after paying a visit to the goodwill, we ate dinner at Old Chicago. Have you ever had a pizzini? I think tonight was a first for me. For $9.99 I got a salad, a pizzini, and a dessert. Pretty good price, pretty good food and all vegetarian. I’ve become a vegetarian by virtue of living with a vegetarian. If I have an appreciable amount of any meat, red meat in particular, I nearly feel like doubling over in pain, so I guess I won’t be eating too much meat. Fish seems to be okay, so maybe I’ll go buy some goldfish from the pet store and keep them on hand for when I need protein.
12 July 2010
I was going to begin this post by saying: “Today, for the first time since early 1986, I don’t own any birds.” But that’s not exactly true. I guess I’ll just give you a brief history of birds in my life:
On March 1, 1986, we bought a pet parakeet from a private breeder. His name was Beaker. He was basically my sister’s bird. A few weeks later, on April 4, we returned to the same breeder and bought a bird for me, named Peppy. Peppy died about a year later and so my parents bought me a new bird, whom I named Ruffles. Beaker and Ruffles got along so well, they shared a cage. Soon they had babies. We gave one baby to my grandparents, and we kept the other one (named Squeaky).
In 1991, Ruffles died, and so we were left with Beaker and Squeaky. Shortly after Jennifer and I got married (in 1996), my parents gave me the birds. Jennifer and I supplemented our bird collection by buying a third parakeet named Dotti. Then we bought a cockatiel named Cosmo. Since Cosmo was extremely needy and wanted constant companionship, we went to another private breeder’s place and bought him a friend, named Anni.
Then here’s where things got weird: the same day we bought Anni, we also bought a lovebird named Tango. Why did I do that? I don’t know. See, lovebirds, despite their name, aren’t very friendly. We couldn’t let Tango out of her cage to fly around with the other birds, because she would attack them. And she didn’t like us, she only bit us. So we had to buy her a friend so that she had at least some companionship. That bird was named Tequila.
So then these breeders had to get out of the bird business for one reason or another, and they asked us if we wanted their breeding lovebirds. Insanely, we said yes, and so, in one day, we became the proud owners of four more lovebirds. Only one pair of them ever produced any eggs, though. The first egg that hatched – the second of four in that clutch – we called “2 of 4”. Get it?
We had fed that bird. We had to bring her with us on a vacation. I even had to stop home after my sister’s wedding (on my way to her reception) so as to feed 2 of 4. Our idea was to sell her to make money but, guess what? Any money we made would’ve only reimbursed us for the money we spent on the birds in the first place. She was such a cute baby bird. She often went under my shirt and sat on my shoulder, falling asleep, sometimes for hours as I watched a movie or read a book. One time, when my friend Ryan came over, he saw how adorable she was towards me, and he said: “Oh, you can’t get rid of cute little ‘two-y.'” I cringed when he said that, because I knew giving her a real name (Twoey) meant I couldn’t get rid of her.
And I couldn’t.
In 1998, when Twoey was only a couple of months old, 12 and-a-half year old Beaker finally died. Cosmo, the cockatiel, died in 1999, and we gave his mate Anni to an avian rescue sanctuary. Squeaky died in 2002, and we bought Dotti a replacement friend (Heidi), who then died in 2006. My sister took Dotti soon after.
As for the lovebirds, we pawned off those breeding pairs and, in 1998, when Tango died unexpectedly, we saw that both Tequila and Twoey were alone. In no time at all, they became friends, and they lived happily together in a single cage until 2007, when Twoey evidently killed Tequila. From December 2007 until today, we’ve owned just one single lovebird…Twoey.
Why didn’t we buy a new mate for Twoey? you ask. And why didn’t we give her to someone else? Answers:
First, I didn’t want to buy another bird. The problem with replacing a fallen mate is that soon the other bird will die. See, I figured if I bought Twoey a mate, then soon Twoey would die, and then I’d be left with her mate. It would never end. Also, lovebirds are very temperamental, so there’s no guarantee she’d get along with the new bird. Further, Twoey was already nine years old, which I thought was about the upper limit of a lovebird’s life.
Second, I tried giving Twoey to my sister, who owns about 50 animals. But she said she didn’t like the idea of me giving her all my birds who are ready to die. This isn’t exactly fair, as I only ever gave her one bird (Dotti, the parakeet), and she lived for over a year with my sister. Still, as I’ve stated above, the lovebird wouldn’t fit in nicely with her bevy of parakeets and other critters, so I couldn’t really push the issue. Instead, I just kept the bird, assuring Jennifer that Twoey would die soon, so we might as well let her stay with us.
Unfortunately, we only have a two-bedroom apartment right now. She chirps loud without any other birds around, and there’s no good place to keep her. She turned ten years old…then eleven…then twelve. I wanted to keep her, but in the last few months, especially as our human family is about to grow, I realized that the only reason I wanted to keep her was sentimental – we’d raised her from a hatchling and had her (almost) longer than any other pet. She had lived with us in four different dwellings.
Still, she’s not a photo album or a family heirloom, so sentimentality is a lousy reason to keep a living thing. I couldn’t stand her. She wasn’t attached to me anymore, having lived with another bird for so long. Even today, I tried to put my hand out to pet her, and she tried to rip a chunk out of my flesh. She’s not happy. We’re not happy.
I called the avian rescue place that took our cockatiel Anni, but they said they’re not accepting new birds right now. They did, however, refer me to PAEP. So, today, Owen and I drove to Lino Lakes and surrendered care of Twoey. We left her with her cage, stand, lots of toys, ten pounds of food and a $25 donation.
In a way, I will miss her, but I know she’ll have a better life now. And so will we.