Well, this sucks…
Ξ September 26th, 2005 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Just before the birth of our second son Riley, Sarah went thru a nesting phase in which she wanted something to take care of. Enter Spike, a parakeet she thought would fill the niche.
Spike was full of personality. Where most birds would shy away from people, he’d get right up close and try and nip your fingers if you weren’t careful.
You’ll also note I’m speaking of Spike in the past tense. Saturday night/Sunday morning, about 1am, Riley wakes up crying (as he often does). Sarah gets up to check on him, then wakes me a few minutes later. “I think there’s something wrong with Spike,” she begins.
“Why would you think that? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Because I have him here in my hand,” she retorts.
Sure enough, he’s sitting quite calmly in her palm, not nipping at her fingers like he normally does, just…sitting there.
Riley comes over to see, and I think that freaked him out a bit. He flew up, and smacked right into a wall.
Then of course the cats decide to see what’s flying around the house, so they rush in. I’m just trying to achive as much damage control as I can, so he doesn’t get hurt.
He flys up again, this time into Kira’s room. He lands on the floor - but on his side. I pick him up. He trembled a bit, and died in my hand.
Slayton and I buried him in the morning. I didn’t think that Riley really knew what was going on, but I’ve got to give the kid more credit, he knew darn well. For the rest of the day, he would go up to Spike’s cage, look in and say ‘bye bye, birdie’ (in Riley-ese, of course).
No one is happy about this (understandably). Parakeets are supposed to live upwards of 15 years. We’d had him for just over three, and he was a baby when we got him. What could we have done differently? Why *did* he die?
