Despite choosing a name for my parakeet that would be based around a potential trio together with Flea and Ozzie a la Chrono Trigger, I never really ever called my bird by her name. I’d usually just call her a list of strange pet names (heh) based on the current chirp or warble that she’d be making, complete with baby talk and high pitched voices.
I purchased Slash from a local bird farm in 2009 as an additional mate for my now late parakeet, Snippy, whose mate (named Snuggles) had suffered from a teflon related accident in my then household. I had estimated Slash’s birthday to be around July, which would make her just three months short of nine years old today. She was squalid and had a terrible odor about her from the dozens of other birds around her, which fortunately managed to go away after a bath or two.
She was a very timid bird, initially being a bit bullied by a more alpha (and older) Snippy, eventually becoming a sort of reactive bird who only did what Snippy did. If it was eating time, then they ate together. If Snippy suddenly took to the air, Slash so followed suit, albeit with abrupt hesitation. If it was time to sleep, the two of them awkwardly scrambled to the top corners of the cage under the cover of blanket, because it was the odd habit that Snippy always had.
When Snippy passed away in 2012, Slash faced a challenge: She had an independence about her to act in whatever manner that she pleased. Needless to say, she was paralyzed with uncertainty—quite literally, at that, for a number of days. In spite of being a reactive and slightly neurotic bird, she had a means of going into a zen—a trait that manifested in the form of sitting atop the cage near the window motionless for hours at a time, as observantly introspective as a parakeet could possibly get.
Despite being a sort of beta-parakeet, Slash did have her own unique traits. She never liked to step up while Snippy was alive, but she liked to playfully nibble at my finger. When I had first gotten her, Slash used to bite very hard, forcing me to adopt a stoicism in the face of painful munching related pain, but after I earned her trust, she never bit me again for at least another eight years. She also enjoyed preening my eyebrows and nibbling at my nose, sometimes taking several minutes to ensure that every little hair was munched as I uncomfortably hanged my head above her cage.
On the flipside, Slash was also very afraid of large, but otherwise harmless (and ostensibly looming) objects. Hell, even an unusual piece of fruit atop her cage was met with a squawk and a round of flight about the apartment until she became accustomed to the foreign object (and subsequently devoured it). The worst offender is a large red broom in my closet, which has a story of its own.
I once left Slash in her cage, closed, while I wanted to do some sweeping, but didn’t take the effort to cover it. Upon sight of the broom, she freezes like a deer in the headlights, and the uncertainty of her past temporarily reveals itself. After a moment of deliberating fight or flight, she exclaims loudly and starts aggressively fluttering around her cage, somehow finding a way to wedge herself in the corner of the cage and trapping her wings between the bars in the process. As I put the broom down and reach my hand over to her, she bites my finger—hard enough to draw blood—as I try to free her from her unusual predicament. That would be the only time in her adult life that she bit me in fear. I limited my future sweeping.
Approximately two weeks ago, I noticed that a fatty tumor began to grow on her abdomen, and my heart sank. This was what had caused Snippy’s death years ago. Although very common in parakeets, this would be a death knell for times ahead. I tried to have Slash exercise a bit more, as she was being more sedentary than usual, but she would become visibly winded and start panting even after one or two trips around the apartment. I tried to balance out her diet with more greens, and for a brief moment she had seemed slightly better.
Upon returning from work this afternoon, Slash had appeared to given up on keeping her feathers preened, and she looked ragged and sickly. I added some more water to her tray and she hurriedly gulped it down.
Returning to unique characteristics, Slash showed signs of affection via preening and beaking, but was always apprehensive about being handled (even though she was never aggressive about it). I was eventually able to teach her to step up to my finger about a year or two after Snippy’s passing. Ever since, Slash had always seemed eager about trying to show affection; she had a habit of inclining her body at the edge of the cage closest to my computer chair and would try to fly over to me, but would turn and fly away at the last moment in hesitation.
After several years of this act, Slash took one last flight tonight and landed on my lap, catching me entirely offguard. I stopped everything that I was doing and drew all my attention to her. She was letting me scratch her, cuddle with her—everything that I had always wanted to do to show my love for her, but could never do out of an uncertain fear that she possessed. I had placed her upon my shoulder and she regurgitated onto the top of my shirt—a birdism that parakeets will essentially do to show their love for another human (or to feed another bird).
It’s as if she knew that her time was short.
I spent the next several hours holding Slash in my arms, giving her small sips of water from a bottle cap. We watched some movies, including a 500th replay of The Fifth Element, and listened to some videos and recordings of bird calls and forest life—an effort to keep some social noise in the room for her, and to keep her relaxed. I brought her to my bedroom around midnight and kept her close to me as I futilely tried to sleep.
It wasn’t until about two hours later that her breathing started becoming more and more labored, and much less frequent per second. I calmed her and soothed her for the last few minutes of her life until she passed at 2:28AM.
In the final moments of her life, I think Slash has taught me the value of expressing love to those around me. For over 30 years I was always afraid to say “I love you” to a person—even to my own parents, who have always loved me without condition and expressed that to me in every way possible. I’m certain that it’s a result of a self-loathing that I could never fully overcome (just block out for lengths at a time), or perhaps rationalized in some bullshit twisted devaluation of the word “love”—as if I’m some hackneyed young adult in a B-rated romantic comedy with commitment issues—but I’m through with wasting my time worrying about that. I don’t want to have to live my entire life and wait until I’m at death’s door before I figure that it’s about time to remind those important to me that I love them. Thank you for showing me the significance of that.
Rest in peace, weeshie sound making birdie. I love you.