To: People who lost a budgie

[Beatriz Cazeneuve]

I had to share this with you! I am feeding the birds dinner last evening when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a spot of yellow on a window sill which made me turn around and look (this is because when I start calling to them, they all fly to the platforms and wait for their seeds so a bird on a window sill is something out of the ordinary and I've been with all my senses tuned to any symptom of disease and weakness is one of them). But the bird was on the outside looking in! A little lemony yellow greywing all fluffed up and looking so very cold and forlon my heart just broke for him! I rushed to open the window but he flew away to another one. We played this game for about five minutes going from the two windows on the front to two windows on the side and, every time I tried to approach the window where he was, no matter how slowly or carefully, he would fly away to another one. So I rushed downstairs, grabbed an old cage that has an open top from the garage and went outside to see if I could lure him into it with seeds. Night was rapidly approaching and the temperature was not only going to go down, it was also going to snow overnight so I knew that, in the morning, he would have been dead. And, like an idiot, I found myself going: "Coocoo, shooshoo, PEEEEEANUTS!" This is my call for dinner and my little ones all come flying when I make it but, of course, this bird was not one of mine and he didn't know anything about no coocoo shooshoo! To put the icing on the cake, with the hullabaloo of the idiot dogs all barking and carrying on in my bedroom windows because I am outside, and me shouting, he got scared and went on the roof! Ay, ay, ay! So I shut up and hid and waited until he went back to the birdroom windows -the poor little thing could hear the birds all calling out to each other and making the usual happy ruckus of feeding time and must have been desperate to join them. So, I rushed upstairs again and, very, very sigilously, I crept on all fours along the wall and flattening my body against it, stretched out one arm and grabbing the bottom of the window (and praying for all I was worth that I was strong enough to raise it with just one hand and in such an uncomfortable position!) I, very slowly, starting moving it upwards and, as soon as there was a crack large enough for him, he flew in! HALLELUJAH!!!

So, people whose budgies have flown out never to be seen again, don't be so sure that they died out there, maybe they, like this one, found a home with other birds on their own!