The Early Years
I went to the library and got all the books I could find on raising happy, healthy birds. This was before the advent of the internet, but there wasn't a shortage of books and magazines on budgies and cockatiels. We went to pet stores and bought the seeds, fruit, veggies, spray millet, gravel, toys recommended by the sales staff. We learned the dangers of chemicals to birds, we learned how to teach them to fly in an apartment full of huge windows, we learned the likes and dislikes of each of our birds. Dancer loved getting spritzed with a spray bottle - she really danced and made sure every part of her body got sprayed. Happy preferred a sedate bath in his own "bathtub".
We woke each morning to the soft chirping of Happy. If we slept in too late, we'd also hear Dancer's loud squawking -- that was enough to get us up and going! We didn't want them to be cage-bound all the time so, with trepidation, we covered all the windows with dark sheets tacked down so they wouldn't fly into the windows. We closed the doors to all the other rooms so they would learn to fly only in the dining/livingroom. And what smart birds they were! Within a few days, we took down the sheets, opened the doors throughout the apartment and they never flew into a window or into any other room.
It soon became apparent that the chandelier over the diningroom table was their favourite rendevous spot, so we had to move the dining table into the livingroom and put fabric mats on the floor under the chandelier. Once they were there, they weren't moving for hours. When it was bedtime, we held out a finger to our respective birds, they'd fly onto our finger and allow us to put them into their cage. One exception to this was when we had my niece Alicia, nephew Ray and Ray's friend down for March break. One night, Happy decided to provide the kids with entertainment before calling it a night. I called him at bedtime. He came and landed on my finger as usual. As I walked him to his cage he took off, flying around and around the livingroom. When he finally landed, I called him again, and again he perched on my finger. And again, he flew off and around the room. He did that another four times, with the kids laughing hysterically and encouraging him. I had to quiet the kids down before he would finally allow me to put him to bed.
Happy was a great little imitator. Sitting quietly reading one evening, we were astonished to hear Happy say "Wanna go to bed Dancer?" He kept repeating it, saying "Dancer, Dancer - wanna go to bed Dancer". From that point, he quickly progressed to "watcha doin' Dancer?" "wanna go to bed Dancer?" "Dancer! Dancer!" "Good boy..Good boy Dancer..Good girl Dancer". His favourite expression was "baby, baby, baby" and he'd intersperse all his conversations with a lilting "baby, baby, baby". We never could teach him to say his own name. I decided I'd teach him to say other (not nice) things. He was a very willing student and was quickly saying "shit head", "kiss my ass", and would sometimes mix it up with "kiss my shithead" (as I said - not nice things). Not so funny now that my sense of humour has matured, but to this day I laugh at the irony of the situation: the only time Happy would use those naughty phrases around other people is when my mother-in-law came over. She came every Wednesday to do her laundry while we were at work and it seems he never stopped from the time she came in 'til she left. She was not enamoured of my talkative little Happy. My mother, on the other hand, came down every few months for a weekend. She slept on the pull-out couch next to the bird cages. She'd wake up smiling and exclaiming how she loved to wake up to Happy's soft chirping in the morning. He would still talk to Dancer, but never used the other words.
Dancer was very attached and bonded to Greg. She started laying eggs ... every few months, there would be a couple eggs in her cage. During one of these cycles, she became egg-bound. We could see she was in distress and rushed her down the street to a nearby veterinary office. She had to stay overnight, that egg was lodged so tight. They called us next morning to come and pick her up - she was fine and squawked and flapped and fluttered her wings, she was so glad to see us. The degree to which Happy and Dancer had bonded became very apparent when we got home. As soon as we opened the door, Happy flew over from his perch on the chandelier, just about screeching "Dancer! Dancer! Dancer!" He didn't even land before he and Dancer both took off to their favourite spot and there spent the afternoon grooming each other, Happy talking away and Dancer squawking back.
Dancer had phenomenal hearing abilities. The hallway outside our apartment was an "L" shape - we lived at the short end of the "L". The elevators were in the middle of the "L" - quite a distance from our apartment. Minutes before Greg came in from work or shopping or wherever he had been, Dancer would start her loud, excited squawking. He could hear her start before the elevator doors closed. She never squawked when I came in or when the people in the next apartment got home but she knew Greg as soon as he got off the elevator. Whether it was his footsteps, keys jangling or whatever, we never did figure out how she knew.
When Happy was about six years old, he developed a hard, crusty growth on the side of his beak. I watched it for a bit as it got bigger, then off we went to the vet. Before the vet opened the cage, I warned him that Happy would try to fly out, so please block the cage door. He didn't heed my warning and opened the cage wide and out came our little Happy. The room we were in was so tiny and he was flying into walls, the vet and Greg making attempts to grab him as he flew around. I was terrified he was really going to get hurt and I told them to just stop and be quiet. I held out my finger and when I called, he landed on my finger trembling, eyes rolling back in his head he was so scared. I put him into his cage and the vet proceeded to - very cautiously - examine his beak. Within seconds, he pronounced the verdict - tumours going all the way down his throat, malignant, not long to live, might as well get it over with while we're here. I was stunned! No, we're not getting anything over with right now. I ran out of the room crying, determined that I at least needed more time with my little sunshine bird. I collected my thoughts, went back into the room where the vet and Greg waited somberly, picked up the cage, leaving Greg to pay the bill, with the vet commiserating with him on women and denial.
Once home, I moved the bird cages to the warmest area of the livingroom, making sure they were away from any draft and against an inside wall. I put a picture behind Happy's cage of a warm, sunny beach - palm trees in the background - that I cut out of a magazine. Not sure why I did that, but I was responding to a deeper instinct. I stayed up all night with my Happy, crying and praying that he'd be okay. And so he was! Over the next day or two, he scratched this crusty growth against his perch and it came off...a little bit of blood that I quickly staunched with a cool face cloth. He was so good and let me examine his beak area. When he opened his mouth, I could see that the "tumour" stopped at the beak and didn't go anywhere into his mouth or throat. I called Greg to have a look, but he wasn't as convinced as I was that Happy didn't have a malignant growth. You know, the women and denial thing! That "tumour" came back every couple of months, Happy would scratch it off, I would tend to it, and so it went month after month, year after year. The saddest part of this was that Happy never did talk again after his visit to the vet. I think it was just too difficult to talk with a big heavy growth on his beak much of the time. He still ate well and continued to groom Dancer, picking away at the short feathers atop her head. He chirped quietly but not as much, but he was still my little Happy bird. The cure for these growths came three years later, but he never did talk again.
In the meantime both Happy and Dancer continued to thrive, Happy with his soft little chirping, Dancer with her crazy dancing and squawks. Our early years were turning into the later years, the story of which is on the next page.