We Lost Another Feathered Friend

Dying is hard, sad, and difficult to watch

Blue, our feathered friend we lost

We had three difficult days in the bird room watching Blue succumb to death. It was not sudden nor totally unexpected as he had been exhibiting signs of increasing frailty for months. His balance was questionable; he often tumbled from perches. He no longer could maintain uplift with his wings and often helplessly glided to the floor instead of reaching his intended target.

Two days before he collapsed on the floor, he stopped eating, a sign of his coming death. When he collapsed, I gathered him up, stroking his head and intoning over and over how much we loved him. I placed him in one of the smaller empty cages, padding the cage floor with layers of newspaper to cushion his body when he fell from the perch, which he would do, and shut him inside. The cage had water and food but I did not expect him to care about either.

We started our vigil, Ziggy and I, both of us talking to him. Ziggy suffered along with Blue. The two of them had a bromance for some ten years, napping together, their bodies pressed against each other, and hanging out on the same perch. Yes, they quarreled, screamed at each other, and when Blue attacked Max, Ziggy’s beloved, he was dispatched to the floor by an infuriated Amazon.

Ziggy spent hours clinging to the side of Blue’s cage begging him to get up, to respond. He would turn to me, crying out in a manner that seemed to me to be a plea to do something to save Blue.

Blue huddled on a food dish with Ziggy staying close by

The morning Blue died, I allowed Ziggy to enter the cage. He rushed in, screaming, grabbed Blue’s wing, picked him up, and shook him, to me a desperate act to retrieve his buddy. He kept on screaming at Blue and me. I cried. Finally, he released Blue’s body, nudged him for a final time, and walked out of the cage. He never returned even though I left Blue there for several hours.

Later that morning, I buried Blue under our blue hydrangea bush.