On loss

If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed when my blog deviates from its theme, don't read this entry. If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed by people who treat their pets like people, don't read this entry. If you're at work and you cry extremely easily, don't read this entry.

Okay, you've been warned.

I learned today that my Mango Bird is dead.

(The rest of this entry is a somewhat rambling eulogy for my dead pet, really written for myself, but you are welcome to read it.)

In 2002, not long after T and I had moved into a one-bedroom, one-window, 500-square-foot apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, I suggested that we get a bird. At that time, the only real experience T had had with birds was with my cockatiel, Herbie, who I had found the year before while living in Omaha. (How I found Herbie was kind of interesting, actually. I was alone in the apartment that I shared with two friends and heard the sound of a cockatiel outside. I went out on our balcony to investigate, saw a cockatiel flying towards me, and instinctively put up my hand for him to land on. He was so relieved to have found someone that he refused to get off of me, so I decided I had to adopt him.)

T and Herbie had never hit it off, and before we moved to New Orleans, I realized that Herbie would be much happier anyway living with someone who had other cockatiels. He went to live with a friend of my mom's and had many happy years with her and her other cockatiel. He died only very recently.

So somehow I convinced T that we should get a bird, and in our usual way of doing things, we dove into research mode. The "field research" was my favorite part since it involved visiting various bird shops and talking to and playing with parrots. At one shop we went to, a smallish, colorful parrot caught my attention. He was curious and friendly, and made a variety of adorable sounds in a doll-like voice from inside his cage in an attempt to get my attention. We learned that he was a Senegal parrot, and while we continued to play with parrotlets and maroon-bellied conures and moustached parrots, we were both in love with the idea of a Senegal parrot.

We found a parrot breeder* we liked who had three baby Senegals. She had already decided to keep one of them, and we chose the most boisterous of the other two (something we frequently teased each other about later). Our bird was too young for us to take home yet, but while we waited, we bought a cage and toys. We even printed a picture of a Senegal parrot and put it in the cage.

I think it was in early 2003 that we brought Mango Bird home, and she was with us through everything – moving from New Orleans to Metairie, evacuating for hurricanes, living with my parents, moving to Wyoming, moving into our house, and then back to Nebraska. we took her for walks along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. We took her on hikes in the Big Horn Mountains and around Devil's Tower. We took her on vacations. I even took her to work sometimes (when I worked at the University of New Orleans).

She was a part of our conversations. Not long after we got her, T developed the habit of addressing her when he felt like I was treating him unfairly. "She's picking on me, Birdie," or, "She doesn't listen, Birdie," he would say. In fact, he continued to say these things after we moved to Morocco, all the way up until a couple of days ago.

Mango and I developed a routine for when I came home after work. I would come into the house and say – as loudly as I could – "Hey, Birdie!" She would respond in kind and would excitedly jump around her cage or get into her swing until I took her out of her cage for some cuddling (yes, you can cuddle with parrots).

She wasn't a perfect bird. She was…assertive. She was friendly in her own way and would just as soon have people be her chew toys as be her companions. She usually only gave each person one chance to make the choice between chew toy and companion (unfortunately, people were often unaware that this was what was happening).

She was smart, as all parrots (except cockatiels) are, and she loved entertaining people with her tricks: "eagle," "high five," and "turn around."

She would develop fixations with seemingly random objects and entertain us with the way she played with them. If she was playing on the floor and didn't want to go back into her cage, she would flip over on her back when we went to pick her up. But at night, if we didn't put her to bed early enough, she would jump off of her play stand, run over to her cage, and look at it expectantly, waiting for one of us to pick her up and put her inside.

She loved going for car rides, no matter how long. She would sit happily in her swing giving out an occasional aaaachoo! or hey, Birdie or clicking sounds to let us know she was there and that she was enjoying the ride.

She was a part of our life the way pets are – until we moved to a place too far away to take her to.

We got to see Mango last summer when we went back to Nebraska for a month, and I had just recently e-mailed the woman taking care of her saying I was looking forward to seeing Mango in less than a month. I was excited because I thought I just might be able to take her back for good in August.

But, obviously, that's not going to happen now.

I chose a parrot as a pet because 1) I'm not as allergic to feathers as I am to animal hair, and 2) they are long-lived, and I don't deal particularly well with loss. Unfortunately, they are also somewhat accident prone. And I'm ridiculously sad. I'm so sad that I don't care how ridiculous it is.

At the same time, my sadness isn't just about the loss of a pet that was, basically, a part of my entire adulthood thus far. Before moving to Morocco, we gave up a lot of things – secure jobs, proximity to friends and family, our house, our cat, our car, a lot of our furniture. I've already been trying to come to terms with the fact that if we make it back to the U.S. (a possibility that I'm not feeling very optimistic about right now), our lives will be much different than they were before we came over here. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But I imagined that, no matter what kind of car or apartment or jobs we ended up with, it would be the three of us, the original trio: Mango, T, and me**. I'm not saying that I only feel this loss symbolically, but it's true that Mango was a part of a stability that has felt increasingly tenuous over the last few months.

Additionally, although it's morbid, I can't help but think about what I would do if something bad should happen to one of our human family members while we are this far away. (In fact, I've been through that before, so I know how awful it is. When I was in college, my grandmother – who had lived with us since I was a very small child – died from bone cancer while my sister and I were on a trip to Czech Republic. Everyone convinced us to stay in Czech Republic and enjoy our vacation. This meant that we missed the funeral and, thus, the opportunity for a community-based ritual to aid in the grieving process. I was rather depressed for several months after that.)

So for all of the reasons discussed above, I'm just going to be sad for a while, if that's all right with you.



*I didn't know as much then as I know now about the problem of homeless birds. Even then, I wouldn't have considered purchasing a bird from a pet store, but now I wouldn't even get one from a breeder – I would only adopt a homeless parrot.

**Pierre the cockatiel has completely forgotten about us, so it's been hard to be very excited about being reunited with him.