"Just" a Bird

  Almost 5 years ago I had been thinking about getting another bird. I have always loved birds, and been fascinated with them---how wonderful it must be to fly! Then my friend Lori decided she wanted another bird, and she contacted a lady on Craigslist who raised parakeets. Lori asked me to ride along with her to pick up a bird, as it was a half hour ride and she wanted company. The lady had three birds for sale. They were only three weeks old, and they were all hand raised, because their mother had rejected them. One was pure white. She said she might keep that one, and I hope she did, because it obviously loved her.The other two, which she hadn't originally thought were even going to hatch, were blue. As we stood in the lady's living room, Lori snuggling one bird to her chest, and I the other bird to mine, I began to fall in love. I was considering taking the bird myself. I even kept thinking of a name, over and over. I would call him Irving Birdwing. But Lori decided she would take both birds. As we drove home we discussed the birds and Lori said I could take one of the birds if I wanted to. I called Ken to see what he would think of me bringing home another pet. (It seemed like every time I went to visit with Lori I brought home a pet: a parakeet once before, a rabbit, a dog.) Ken didn't like the idea. His answer was a resounding "NO". He said we had enough pets and didn't need another expense. "All those 'free' pets have been expensive.", he said. I wanted the bird so much, I overrode his decision. When we got home we opened the box where the birds were huddled neck to neck, and I took Irving out.
  Irving turned out to be a girl, but we kept the name. it suited her somehow.

  Two days after we took her home she got her foot caught in a thread on my clothes, and in her panic to free herself she injured her foot. She couldn't walk on it very well, but still insisted on walking around and climbing her cage, using a wing, one foot, and her beak. A few days later, when we had been out for the day, we came home to find she had hurt her tail, probably from falling while trying to climb her cage. Now she couldn't balance  either. I felt so guilty. I had taken her when she could have gone home with Lori, and now I had certainly doomed her to death. We took her to the vet, who recommended  we put her down. "You have to consider quality of life over quantity.", he said. He said it was very doubtful she could repair her nerve damage. His proof that she was beyond help, was that she walked toward him no matter which way he kept turning the towel he stood her on. (She wanted to walk to him!), and that she snuggled in my hands. "I don't know of any bird, handraised or not, that will let you hold it." Well then you don't know much. Irving was still a baby, and loved to fall asleep snuggled in my lap in my bed. Even when she grew up, she would still consent to be held occasionally, and would lean against my face when asked to "Give me a snuggle".
  And grow up she did. The vet said the only chance Irving had depended on how much time we were willing to spend on her. She had to have a fish tank so she couldn't climb,and we had to spend as much time holding her as we would. So we got a tank, and when I got up in the morning I went to her tank and put my hand in the bottom. As fast as she could she would drag herself over and climb into my hand. We all took turns holding her all day long. Ken works evenings, so all day he and I would take turns holding Irving. There was no other way she could groom herself because she couldn't balance, and it kept her weight off her foot and tail. When the kids got home from school, they took their turns holding her. In two or three weeks Irving was back to normal.
  Irving had more personality than any bird I have ever seen. She also showed so much love.

Irving was hard to photograph because she was fascinated with the camera.(Like most female parakeets, she wasn't much of a talker,but she learned to copy the sound of the camera shutter,along with the microwave beep, and the dining room door squeak.)

Trying to photograph her outside her cage usually resulted in this.

 But we did manage to catch this one, before she could get close enough to jump onto the camera! But she was running at it already!

She loved to spend time sitting on my head.

She was not usually a shoulder sitter. She preferred heads, in this case, Emma's.

She would use my hair like a tether rope and slide down by it to nibble at my face.

Although she did sit on shoulders so she could indulge in another interest...

...For some reason she also liked to look in mouths.

 She'd put half her body in there if she got the chance. Very trusting of her, but I nearly bit her head off once when she stuck her head in there while I was talking.
  She had to be a part of everything, and was very curious.

Irving helping to make a phone call in Ken's messy computer room.

  We tweeted back and forth constantly.
  One day, when Irving was about 9 months old, I had spent the morning working around the house with her on my head. It was so normal for us I didn't even think about it after a while. I found a lady bug and went to throw it out the back door--forgetting Irving was on my head. Of course, she flew out the door, and continued down the street and around the corner. It was November, and there was a freezing cold rain falling. I ran after Irving, but she was nowhere to be seen. I stood in the street and screamed to the family for help. Ivy was in school, but Emma was home from college and Fuzz was doing computer school and only went in for German class in the afternoon. Ken was home too, since it was 10:45 AM. They all ran out. Fuzz went all the way to the corner, barefoot and in pajamas trying to see her. Ken told me she was gone and there was nothing I could do, so I should come in. But I couldn't leave her out in the cold, She probably wouldn't survive. And she was so friendly, she would land on our dog's head. She would certainly be eaten by something. I was so upset I tried to tweet to her and couldn't get it out. Ken told me to calm down and tweet to her. I grabbed my coat and started down the street tweeting. When I got to the corner I heard her tweet back, but from waaaaaaay down the street. But I kept tweeting and in a second I heard her very close. She had come back.
  I found her on the roof of a house on the next corner and across the street. I couldn't see her, but we tweeted back and forth for a while. Fuzz had put on shoes and a coat at my insistence, and was out looking too. Emma had gotten dressed and came to the house where we were. It's a good thing no one was home because we stood outside their house tweeting and calling, "Irving!" Emma brought Irving's cage over in case we could coerce her back into it. But Irving stopped tweeting back. I wasn't sure if she had flown away or decided to do what she did at home after a bath: take a nap until she dried off, and no tweets until she woke back up.
  Fuzz thought he saw her fly around the back of the house, but he wasn't sure. We decided he would head down an alley on the other side of the side street, and I would take the alley behind the house where she had been. I started down the alley tweeting, and there she was,on a bush behind the house. She flew from bush to tree, to tree, to tree, until eventually she was 2 more house down.
  The whole family spent the day trying to get Irving to come down. But it rained all day. It was freezing cold. A group of sparrows were in a bush under the edge of a shed, but Irving was in a bare tree in the cold rain. I tweeted to her on and off all day so she wouldn't forget I was there. Eventually we realized Fuzz was late for German, and Emma ran him to school, still in his pajamas and boots. She came back with a net, but that didn't work either. I had to explain to the lady whose tree Irving ended up in, why we were all behind her house, with two vehicles, (Emma's and ours.),and a 16 foot ladder up her tree. Irving had parked in their tree and decided to take her nap until she dried off.
  The vehicles were to survive the cold, because it was COLD. I soaked two coats and a large tablecloth standing in the rain. Ivy had been picked up from school in the afternoon and joined the vigil. It got late. Ken had to be at work by 5, so he had to go home to get ready for work. Emma had to go to the bathroom. Fuzz had already gone home when he got mad because I wouldn't let him break his neck climbing a wet tree to try to catch Irving. Eventually,it was just me and Ivy, but Emma left the truck so we could stay warm. It was beginning to get dark.
  The rain stopped, and Irving began to tweet back, and shake the rain off her feathers. Pretty soon she would be dry and fly away forever. I decided to try again to climb the ladder up the tree and try to get her to come to me. I got to the top of the ladder and tweeted. She tweeted back. Then she flew. I thought."This is it. She's gone." But she only flew in an arc, and landed on my shoulder. I got her on my hand and she gave me a kiss, and flew onto my head. It was literally a blur after that, as I was crying so hard I could hardly see. I talked to her all the way down the ladder, although I'm not sure how I got down.I had been straddling a huge puddle in front of the door of the truck, getting in and out for the last few hours, but I have no memory of the puddle at this point. I only remember gliding over to the truck and getting in with Irving on my head, and shutting the door. Once inside she hopped onto my chest and I clutched her in my hands. Ivy got in with her cage and we were home free. I immediately put Irving in the cage and Ivy said, "Aw, you're not going to put her in the cage are you?!" "Are you kidding?!"
  She had given up her freedom to come to me.
  Everybody got colds after that: except Irving.
  A couple of years ago or more Irving began to lay eggs. They weren't fertile of course, but birds lay them anyway. I constantly worried that Irving, being so small, would become eggbound, unable to deliver her egg. It's fatal. Every time she went into egg laying mode, I worried. We aren't sure if that was the problem, because she was still eating, and active,but Irving kissed me goodnight for the last time last Friday night.
  When there's a death, never tell someone, "It's just a bird." Or a dog, or a cat, or whatever. Animals are part of the family. They give us love, and we fall in love with them. I never had a pet show me as much love as Irving did. I never had a pet who loved me more than anyone else. Irving was my baby. We had a bond I've never had with any other pet, as much as I loved them all. Irving was special.
   I will bring home no more pets. I don't want another bird. I'm finished.

Goodnight my Irving girl. I love you forever.

Everything happens for a reason

    Yesterday something totally unexpected happened that proves what I believe: Everything happens for a reason.
  My friend Lori, who has recently been having heart problems,loves animals. They're literally her life. She has loads of animals of her own, and she works as a vet technician. In her job and life she frequently finds herself in situations where she ends up rescuing animals. Sometime she finds new homes for them, but a lot of the time she keeps them. Once when I was with her we had to move a snapping turtle out of the road so he didn't get smashed.In that case she didn't need to be involved after just moving him to safety, but it isn't always like that.
  We had been talking about going somewhere this Saturday to just hang out and have fun.We debated staying here in the town I live in, or going to some other nearby town. (She lives out in the country.) I voted for 'some other town', since I'm always here. So she randomly picked a small town nearby and we went out for lunch. After lunch we did  a little shopping and then headed down the road to see what else we could kill time with. As we came to a park, (The kind with boating and camping, etc., not a playground.), Lori turned in. She had been trying to find out if they had horse riding trails and she wanted me to see the pretty view overlooking the water. As we came to the parking lot we saw a car parked along the edge. When we pulled along behind the car we saw that the guy in the car was just sitting there looking at something. What he was looking at kind of left us with our mouths hanging open. There, just grazing and hopping around, were 8 rabbits! I was sort of stunned, as I said, "Those aren't wild rabbits." They were domestic bunnies. Seven of the eight were lop earred bunnies, and the eighth was a small white bunny with red eyes. Apparently the guy had just seen somebody pull in and just drop off the rabbits. He didn't want to leave them there, since they probably wouldn't have survived the night,but he had nothing in his small car to take them in and besides was on his way to a reunion. He'd been trying to contact his daughter and grandson, who had rabbits, but they weren't answering their phone. Also, they lived so far away it probably wouldn't have done much good.Soon the bunnies would probably hop off into the woods they were right on the edge of and be gone. Lori and I were flabbergasted that anybody would do something like just dump off 8 rabbits,but Lori said she had seen it happen before. Then we remembered the fair had recently ended. These rabbits had tattoos in their ears for identifying them for exhibiting. They were someone's fair project and now they were no longer needed. Pretty heartless behavior. These rabbits were far too tame to survive in the wild. They had no fear of anything. Also, it's very irresponsible to introduce non native species into the wild. Either they won't survive, or they will survive too well, threatening native species. (We're having that situation with lady bugs around here. You may think ladybugs aren't important, but apart from being important just because they are part of the natural order of things, they also serve a very useful purpose, eating pest insects and keeping the population of such insects at a manageable level. The local chicken...FACTORIES, (The only way to describe it.) have created a major fly problem. When local ladybugs couldn't handle the problem, Japanese ladybugs were imported to help. You might think that was a good idea, but you'd be wrong. The non native ladybugs turned out to be far more aggressive than the local little red guys.They are much bigger and eat EVERYBODY, including the native ladybugs. We have hardly seen red lady bugs for the last few years. The larger brown lady bugs have nearly taken over (although we do see some hybrids.) They also BITE, and like the red lady bugs, they smell.With bigger bugs you get a bigger bite and a bigger smell...)
  Anyway,after the initial shock we immediately began to think, "What do we do? We can't just leave them here to die." Lori decided they looked healthy;clear eyes and good coats were a couple of signs.She always carries a small pet carrier with her in case of,well, with her I guess you'd say 'the inevitable'. We knew we couldn't get all 8 into it though. What to do? We started picking up bunnies, and they didn't run at all. There were a couple of half hearted hops, but mostly they just sat and let themselves be picked up. We got about 5 of the smaller ones in the carrier and she put a couple more in the back seat floor of her truck,(Which we had decided to take instead of the car because of flood warnings. Oh by the way, my basement flooded again too. Not as badly this time, luckily.)See, something else that we just happened to do that was perfect. Once the bunnies were in the truck she opened the carrier, but most of them preferred to stay inside. I got the last couple out of the ditch and we debated if they would jump out of the back of the truck. Lori was a little worried about them peeing in the floor. I said, they could jump out, and it's only two more. At this point we laughed about the idea that if you have 6 rabbits peeing in your truck, what would two more hurt?
  So we carted them back to Lori's house.I had a bunny a few years ago.(That was Lori's fault. I just went for a visit and came home with a border collie and a rabbit!) His name was Gabriel and I loved him dearly. Gabe had a stroke at one point and for a few weeks had to be hand fed and given water, and bathed by me because he couldn't get up. After a while he got well enough to clean most of himself again and got around ok, but he was blind in one eye and wouldn't come out of his cage any more.He lived for several years after that though and was a lovey boy. I still miss Gabe and get a bit sad every time I throw away the cauliflower leaves he used to love. I have thought many times about getting another bunny, but the short life span  put me off. Unfortunately I'm a sucker for a friendly animal, and I made the mistake of bonding with the next to last bunny I picked up. He's dark brown with tan highlight hairs. He rode part of the way back to Lori's on my lap and is a real snuggler. At her house we put the rabbits in a stall.Lori kept saying stuff like, "You can take yours home in the carrier." "There's a towel in the carrier."(Because the brown bunny had been wet from the park and then kept sitting with his front legs in the water dish in the stall.), and "Yours is blah blah..." I'm such a push over. I couldn't resist and besides, how was Lori ever going to find homes for EIGHT bunnies?
  I brought 'mine' home and Ivy immediately named him Jerome, after composer Jerome Kearn. 

  She had actually said a while back that that was going to be the name of our next pet, since our last one, my parakeet, is named after Irving Berlin. (Don't ask me why. I just kept thinking 'Irving Birdwing'. And by the way, I got Irving because I went with Lori to pick up HER parakeet, and bonded with Irving, who was a three week old baby who loved to be held.) Jerome has settled in nicely and is already enjoying laying in the fireplace like Gabey used to do. 

We were meant to have Jerome, and Lori was meant to save those bunnies. Otherwise we might have stayed here,or gone to another town. We might have lingered longer eating and/or shopping and the bunnies might have already hopped off into the woods.Lori might have driven the car and been less inclined to take a chance on bunnies peeing in it. (Nah, she still would have risked it.) We might not even have pulled into the park in the first place. She kept laughingly saying, "Why?! Why?!" I said, "Because it's what you're meant for. It's your calling in life." Like I said, everything happens for a reason.