I decide in Seminary that I had to learn to take care of some other living thing. I had grown up with dogs and birds and, sure I played with them but at the end of the day they were really my mother's. At the end of the night my mother covered the birdcage and the dog followed her to bed. I had seen friends go through the same thing and get pets, I actually noticed that in taking care of their pets they became better people. I didn't have the space for a dog in my apartment and it wouldn't be fair because there was no yard so I got two birds from a friend who had a roomful of more than two dozen birds.
They were parrotlets, I named them Abraham and Sarah after a famous couple. They were truly a couple, I noticed that the female over pruned the male. In fact Abraham was (as I expect the Biblical Abraham) bald. He looked a bit like a vulture, and it was the first thing most people commented on. And though it might have seemed odd it was her way of saying “I love you, you are mine, everyone else better stay away.”
Every morning they chirped at the sunrise, and during the day I would watch them hop around the cage back and forth on the perches. Abraham and Sarah followed me from an an apartment on campus at seminary, to my fifteenth floor apartment in midtown Memphis, they stayed with me through a very cold winter in Jackson Mississippi, and rode with me back to north Mississippi. Most recently they came with me to Grenada Mississippi. I was preparing to move them again, back to Jackson Mississippi.
I had spent all Saturday out with my special friend, and when we arrived at home I checked on my two birds. I saw Sarah in the corner where she usually sat and Abraham was lying at the bottom of the cage. I wasn't sure what to do but clean the cage. I left Sarah in the hands of my girlfriend, I didn't want her to see me cleaning her mate from the bottom of the cage. I finished cleaning the cage and put Sarah back. I rent so it isn't like I had somewhere to bury the dead.
The question was posed, “Do you think she wonders where he is or if she knows he's dead?” I have also been warned that she may not make it long because her mate is dead. I am used to looking into the cage to see my two birds huddled together, now I look and see one. I think about her and can't help but cry. I have been a life long pet owner, I have sat through the death of other birds, and have been through two dogs put to sleep. I know I wonder where they are, animals that are taken into home and they become like people. I always thought that there was a place in heaven for dogs, I suppose it isn't a jump to say there is a place for birds.
I feel sorry for Sarah left alone in the cage. I had actually planned on buying a new cage, I have had these two birds for 6 years and the cage was looking bad, but now I don't know if I can take it away from her, then I think maybe I should. I don't know. I don't know how long Sarah will make it without her mate, all I know is there is a lonely bird in a cage by my window.
