Birds

Subbie year, my father and brother took a trip to Bulgaria. My mom, sister and I were left at home for 1 month, and during that month, we decided to make a change to our household arrangement. Entirely on a whim, we went to Petsmart, with the intention of only looking around at the different animals. We watched the dogs get haircuts for a while. My sister tried to count the pink fish in one of the tanks. We looked at the reptile section and debated the merits and detriments of being cold blooded. It wasn’t until we were nearly done that my mom saw a glass display off to the side with two little parakeets inside, one white and one yellow.

    We had never had pets before. Immediately my sister felt a sort of attachment. She was 5 then, and the idea of having birds, or really any pet, seemed to her the most fantastic thing in the world. I was incredibly surprised when my mom seemed to be open to the idea. Somehow, in the span of 10 minutes, we were picking out cages and discussing which bird food they would prefer. Before we left, I asked one of the sales associates what the genders of the birds were, just out of curiosity. The ladies there told me it was too early to tell. In parakeets, you can tell by the color of the cere (the area just above the beak). In males, it’ll be somewhere between a blue and a purple. For females, it’s closer to a white. You can usually start to tell at around 12 months, or when the birds become adults. Ours weren’t there yet.

    The next step was to pick names. Highlighter for the yellow one, and Snowy for the White. We had these birds for about a year before something incredibly strange began to happen. We found out that Snowy was a boy and Highlighter a girl, but not only that, we found out that Highlighter was laying eggs. We arranged the cage into a proper environment, and before we knew it, we had a number of little birds. There were now seven in total. Snowy and Highlighter, the parents, and Pixie, Panini, Omizu, Soccer Ball, and Masha, their children. Only a week after their hatching, the two parents flew away during an unfortunate incident when the front door was left propped open.  I still wonder where they could have gone and what happened to them. We were down to five. My brother spent the next few weeks feeding each of them a special parakeet baby formula through a syringe. In the span of the next few years in equally unfortunate cases, Pixie and Masha ended up flying away as well. Now we were down to three.

    Soccer Ball is black and white spotted with a blue underbelly. He’s easily the most assertive and adventurous of the remaining birds. He’s also rather large for a parakeet. What their likes and dislikes are I can’t say too well, birds are rather less expressive than say dogs or cats. If I had to guess for him though, I would say he likes being let out. He’s pretty good at flying, and that gives him an edge over his siblings. He’s the only one that needs to be coerced to go back into the cage. 

    Omizu is quite the opposite. Her feathers are a pristine white and she’s the most cautious bird I’ve ever seen. We get the birds new toys rather frequently. Whether they be things that rattle, or swings, or just new sticks to perch on, Omizu stays in the furthest opposite corner for at least a week before daring to get near the suspicious object. She also refuses to get out of the cage entirely on frequent occasions. When she does, she’ll stay very near. It’s interesting to see such clear displays of personality coming from such tiny animals.

    The last is Panini, and she is somewhat of a happy medium. The same highlighter yellow as her mother, she’s the perfect balance between outgoing and reserved. 

    This is the 5th year we’re going with having birds. I can say I’ve grown quite accustomed to it. You always develop little habits when you have pets, like expecting a bird to fly into your room when you're doing my homework, or taking the blanket off of their cage in the mornings. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to have birds as I grow older and start to live on my own. Regardless, I’m very happy I’ve gotten the experience.