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Topic: The Family Pet (05/15/08)
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TITLE: Bird Brain | Previous Challenge Entry
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05/16/08 -
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Hi! I love pets: cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, tortoises, tropical fish, and gold fish. You name them, we’ve had them all at different times. As a child we had cats, dogs and birds and I even had a horse of my own at one time. I made up my mind that I would never have birds when I grew up because they have no brains. My mom’s canaries all committed suicide and were found hanging in their cages, while her budgies thought they were prisoners of war and had to escape long before they ever learned to talk. It was really ‘for the birds’.
While in Rhodesia we had every kind of pet at one time or another. On coming to Australia I decided that, living in a unit we did not have enough room for animals, so pets were out. Someone suggested a bird but you already know my verdict, no bird brains for me. Recuperating after a very serious illness, my wife found something for me to do, she always will. While at home I was to handcraft Tunisian Crochet hooks from dowel rod. So with a sample I set out to become a manufacturer. She was a hard task master.
Still in a unit, no place for pets to keep me company, I spent many lonely hours chipping away at the wood and sanding the hooks. I bought myself a computer and began developing Bible study notes for home cell groups. Who needed people or pets anyway. Fi went to work to earn our living and I became a kept man on a medical pension.
Fi’s employer was a bird fancier breeding Quarrions, one day he asked if we knew someone who wanted a budgie. I was leading a home group in our church and two ladies who attended had an aviary with birds, especially budgies.
When Fi brought the budgie home he was a “Peach Face” Her boss must have known after all he was a ‘birdman’. “Wendy can’t have him,” I said, “He’s mine” and so ‘Peet’ moved into our home. To start with his cage sat beside my chair, door open, as I read or did whatever. Before long he bonded with me and spent more time sitting on me than in the cage. He soon had free range of the house.
Bird brain nothing. He knew his own mind and often did his own thing. It was ‘Peet’ that taught me to save my work frequently. He would sit on a picture frame above my desk and if I ignored him for too long, he would simply come down and strike the escape key, blotting out all my work. He also developed a taste for apple juice and had to have his own glass set aside in the kitchen just for him. Apple juice mind, not tropical or orange or even orange and mango.
Visitors beware! ‘Peet’ was a bully and would dive bomb them especially if they ducked. He loved to play ‘chicken’ with our visitors. Our one granddaughter loved to play with him. She would take one of my dowel blanks and wave it at him shouting, “fly bird, fly!” and although she could never have reached him, he readily obliged and played with her for hours on end. One day she lost him,
”Where is that little creature?” she asked.
Looking over to where she was I saw ‘Peet’, sitting on the door handle, just behind her head. This time within reach.
One Saturday afternoon I was watching the Cricket on television. It was so riveting that I fell asleep and began to snore. Fi; in the kitchen heard another noise and came to see what was happening. ‘Peet’ no longer stayed in his cage he roamed the house as his own domain. We had put a finch’s nest on the lounge light fitting in which he slept. Fi looked up to see ‘Peet' in his nest imitating my snoring. Whose do you think was the bird brain?
‘Peet’ also loved to shower under the dripping kitchen tap. He would sit on the rim of a glass or cup while the water dripped on his head. Only if he had an audience.
One day he went looking for me and found an open window, outside of his own domain he was lost. Poor ‘Peet’. We’ve had other birds since then but each one tells another tale of the power of a ‘bird brain’.
(Words 748)
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Loved the snoring part.
Keep writing!
I enjoyed reading about Peet. Thank you for sharing, and keep writing.