I love animals (except cats, cats are dicks) and if I was responsible and mature enough I would probably have two dogs and a huge fishtank and an aviary outside and a parrot and maybe even some bunnies thrown in. Unfortunately, I'm a broke student who can't bring a mini zoo with me every time I move house, so I have a budgie. (Or budgerigar/parakeet, whatever you call them where you come from)
This is the story of how I came to be a budgie owner.
Bert
Bert was my first budgie. One Christmas we were at my Aunty's house, and a budgie had flown into her house. She managed to catch it and put it into a cage. Unsure what to do with it, she offered it to me. I spent the rest of the weekend begging my parents to let me keep it, and trying to prove to them what an awesome budgie owner I would be. I felt bad for him, being all cooped up in that cage...
so I took him into the bathroom and let him out to fly. He was so happy flying around....
until he crashed into the wall...
and fell down into the gap between the shower and the wall.
SERIOUSLY? Who puts a gap between the shower and the wall?
I ran to get help help. In the end, it took three men to pull apart the shower and rescue him, with me crying hysterically the whole time. He hopped back into his cage, unaware of all the fuss he had caused. And after ripping up my Aunty's shower, my parents could hardly say no to me. SUCCESS!!
Pictured above: budgie owner
I loved Bert so much.
He loved his mirror so much.
In the end I decided that it would be better if I got him a real budgie to talk to, instead of just a reflection.
Introducing Fiona.
After a few squabbles, Fiona and Bert became friends. I got my father to build an aviary for them to live in. We put in a nesting box, and soon enough we had baby budgies.
I think that baby budgies are possibly the most adorable things ever. Most other people find them repulsive. If you've never seen one before, they look like miniature pink roast chickens. And when their feathers start coming through, oh wow, SO CUTE! As much as I loved all these little babies, my parents told me that I couldn't possibly keep all of them, so I sold them to the petshop. I hope they went to good homes.
I thought that maybe Bert and Fiona would like another friend to talk to, so I got Toby.
He was a big mean budgie, and bullied Bert and Fiona so much that I ended up giving him to a friend who had a bigger aviary with more birds. He fit in fine at their place, so I can only assume they were breeding demon budgies. Even now, I still distrust green and yellow budgies.
Bert and Fiona had more babies, and this time I kept one as a tame budgie and named it Harry. Harry was awesome. Since he was hand reared, he was very tame. He would come with me to poker nights at my friends place and hang out with us all. I loved Harry. I went on holiday for two months, and left him with a friend. When I got back, he wasn't tame anymore, so I put him in the aviary with his parents. It was a bit confusing, as Bert and Harry looked so similar, the only way you could tell them apart was if they were side by side, as Bert was slightly bigger.
When I went to live in Belgium for a year, my parents were in charge of looking after the budgies. As my mother was feeding them, one escaped. Thing is, they had no idea which one escaped, as Bert and Harry looked the same.
When I'd been back for a few months, the budgies mated. We started to really, really hope that it was the son (Harry) and not the father (Bert) who had escaped, because.... GROSS! One day I checked in the nesting box to see if there were any eggs, and I found Fiona , dead. I was heartbroken, and blamed myself for not realising the obvious (in hindsight) signs of egg binding. It broke my heart to see Bert/Harry being all alone every day, so I ended up giving him to a friend who was starting to breed budgies.
And that was the end of my budgie owning days... Or so I thought.
After my first year at uni, I decided to get another budgie. I wasn't going to be living in the uni accommodation anymore, so I would be allowed a pet. I went into the pet shop, telling myself that I was only going to get the prettiest budgie anyone's ever seen, and it had to be absolutely perfect, ect.
I walked in, saw the ugliest budgie I'd ever seen, and it was love at first sight.
He had scabs on his face...
gross feathers...
And once I'd taken him home and showed him proudly to my parents, my father discovered that he had an underbite.
But he still has that underbite, which costs me nearly $50 every couple of months to get trimmed. He's so stupid that he can't figure out how to get out of the door of his cage. I only need to make the tiniest noise to have him screaming in my ear for the rest of the day. I occasionally have dreams that I own a really cool parrot, and wake up to find that I have a budgie, and then I don't like him as much for a few minutes. He falls in love and becomes aggressively obsessed over any toy that I give him, so he's now no longer allowed toys in his cage. His favourite outside of the cage toy is a roll of toilet paper, which he shreds to pieces and then throws the pieces all around my room. When he's in his cage, he spends his spare time licking the bars of his cage. He's not yet sure whether he's a girl or a boy. The vet seems to think he's a boy, who has hormonal surges.
Despite all this, he is the awesomest budgie EVER and he's pretty much the love of my life... And you thought I was joking when I told you that I was a crazy bird lady?
