Moving In story 2

The birds.

When I moved out of Chateau Place in '92 I had two parakeets, Marge and Homer. They lived a number of years: Marge died because I went on vacation and the landlord forgot his promise to feed and water the pets. Homer lived for a while by himself, then Nick's friend Davis offered the cage and birds from his home, as his mom didn't want any birds any more. That brought the population up to three parakeets.

They provided a continuous cascade of musical interest from their perches, but they had become hyperaggressive physically. We couldn't put our hands in the cage after the two new birds moved in...one in particular had a nasty talent for getting its beak point directly under the cuticle of an approaching finger, causing an intensity and subtlety of pain that the Marquis de Sade himself would have appreciated.

But to me the music was worth the mechanical problem of cleaning the cage and keeping the food and water fresh. After a few years, as the grief of divorce subsided and I began finding new ways to measure myself against the rule of existence, I began to take pride in the simple act of changing the bird's water and keeping fresh food in their plastic bins.

When it came time to move to Bloomington, a few weeks ago, Sara pleaded with me to leave the birds with someone else. I was torn, because I love her and don't want to cause her pain, but I felt a Buddhist sense of obligation to the life energies of the parakeets.

Finally I decided to follow Sara's suggestion and offer them to a young woman who had carried out a dozen boxes of books from our attic to her new bookstore on Nokomis. Her name was Mary, and she was game to try having some birds in her bookstore.

I left them with her feeling good about the loss of my little song beasts, whose reptilian aloofness and constant quarrelling had animated my kitchen with the small similacrum of familial energy for the long days when I was alone. With Sara I was never alone and with the birds, Mary's little bookstore would have antic talismen, feathered tchotchkes worthy of comment by all and sundry.

Since Mary seemed a little apprehensive about the care required, I said she could call before two weeks were out and I would take them back, if they proved to be too much to care for.

I didn't hear a peep from her. Finally today I called her up and asked about the birds. There was a long silence, then she confessed that one had died within a few days of arrival at her store. She was distressed, too distressed to tell me on the phone.

I felt badly for her, and tried to say something, but it seemed awkward. What had I given her? Not a gift. I had given her death and loss.

Well, she decided to keep the one bird, the green one, and put some effort into its welfare and comfort. In the meantime several clients had taken a liking to the bird. I don't know what did the little beaky tyke in, allah rest its soul in budgie paradise. But it is evidence, if you need any, that all change is attended by loss, but you cannot predict what exactly the loss will be, and cannot be intimidated by its process as the wheel of life turns on.