Our Talking Parakeet!
Posted: Saturday, May 08, 2010
by Connie Case
So when I was about 7 years old my brother threw dimes into little jars at the yearly carnival that traveled through our little northern California town. A dime landed in a jar that had a blue parakeet attached. "You've won the bird!" Yelled the carnival man. I looked at my brother and he had a smile a mile long on his face. We so proudly took our new pet home. My mother said we would need a bigger cage than the small one we had brought him home in. She went to the local farm town store and came home with a medium size white cage. She sat it on top of the water heater in the kitchen.
My mother would say every morning "Dicky Bird!" in a squeaky voice. After several more months the bird would say, "Dicky Bird" when my mother walked into the kitchen. We were amazed... What a pet we had found at the carnival.
In one year Dicky Bird was whistling my brother's whistle, saying Dicky Bird to my mother and taking a bath when my mother would turn the water on in the kitchen sink. He would fly down on her shoulder, walk down her arm and take a bath in the luke warm water. He was entertainment for the whole family.
He favored my mother and every time she came into the kitchen he would whistle my brother's whistle. She would say, "Why thank you Dicky Bird!" Soon Dicky Bird would say "Why thank you!" to my mother and only to my mother.
We enjoyed him for almost 10 years. My brother had gone off to the army, my sister had married and moved on. She didn't have much to do with Dicky Bird anyway. My mother and father got a divorce and I was left at home as a teenager with Dicky Bird and occasionally my drunken father.
I talked to the bird every night. He was my therapist. He would listen to my sad tails of being left by my family all alone. When I had finished talking he would say, "Why thank you!' in his squeaky voice. I loved that bird.
One night I had some friends over. Teenagers from school. My dad was off at the bar crying about my mother leaving him, and me and my friends were playing cards and drinking beer. The beer was illegal but what the heck, teenagers will be teenagers.
I didn't see one of the boys sneak in the kitchen and give "Dicky Bird" the beer. The next morning, hung over and feeling lonely I went for my only friend I knew would listen to me. He wasn't on his perch.
I looked in the cage and there was Dicky Bird, stiff and laying on the floor of his cage. I saw what was left of the beer in his water container. I was crushed. My only consoler was gone... I decorated a beautiful box and dug a grave in the long gone family garden. "Good-by Dicky Bird!" I said, and wept.
That bird may have been a cheap carnival give away, but to me and our family, he was our best friend....
Connie Case
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Darn it. I'm a manly man and yet there is a hint of water in my eye. An experience described through obviously top notch writing. Thanks.Thanks Al! Appreciate your comment. CC
Dear Connie, Thank you for your sharing. It is real sad when our Parakeets died. It is especially true if you are so close to your Dicky Bird. We still keep 2 of them and 1 Cockatiel. The Cockatiel is my wife's favorite. This bird shows intelligent look some times.
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