The Parrot Tree, credit: tessross.wordpress.com (2013)

You know, I have imagined myself doing a lot of things. I was once president, a peasant in the mountains the next day, a shepherd, you name it – I’ve lived through all of them. I’m neither cool nor calm, on most days. But I can think the heck out of imaginations. We haven’t got time to do much of aught else. Ahem.We’re your favourite frumpy aunt, your fave hysterical friend who’s thought of every and any doomsday scenario out of every reaction. Okay okay, I’m slightly cool. I dress up for external presentations, and breeze through the week with a repetition of what I wore exactly the previous week, day for day. I don’t wear three quarters of my wardrobe because, well, there’s too much thinking involved in dress up. And matchy matchy nonsense. And yet time and again, I shop for those very impractical things I lament about. I have a shoe rack full of high heels I bought because I’m short, and I wanted to push myself to be uncomfortable. I mean, what’s a girl to do but repeat the 3 flats that she owns. Black, black, and navy, in case you’re wondering.

Anyway, back to serious things. Life and death. Really. I rarely get surprised, I was saying, because I have probably imagined myself doing or experiencing the very things that I should get surprised about. Positive things, of course. I’m the worst recipient of bad news. I zone out when people get boring, imagine how much worse it is when those very people come bearing tragic news. I not only zone out, I switch off and run. Mentally of course. We reserve our cowardice up top. I file bad news for tomorrow. You know, when people procrastinate school and work, and life in general, I procrastinate dealing with bad news. And phone calls. Crisis, now that’s a different ball game. I get a high off of coming up with solutions. You know, reverse the hell out of those bad trajectories. Irreversible unpleasantness on the other hand? Nope honey. Not today. I’ve dabbled in emotion regulation. But it’s easier to sweep it away, far from sight. Damaging? Probably. But we’re still alive people. Okay, enough digressing.

We killed two parrots. I’m sorry I had to say it like that. Obviously we had no intention of killing them. I can’t even imagine anyone making… what? Parrot soup? Shudder. That’s what we did. We just, you know, ended up killing them. And I don’t know how I can live with that. See, it started like most social experiments start, with the noblest of intentions. We were going to save them. We would buy them from street sellers, locked up in cages. And we would bring them home to feed and release them into their natural habitat. Free. Up high in the trees. A charitable project, in all sense of the word. And we did this again and again, until one wouldn’t simply fly away with its mate to the trees. And we watched as it horrifically whooshed down three floors to the ground. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t unclench my body to unwatch. It was still alive. And so there we were, coddling it and hoping its wings would, you know, start working so it could fly off into the trees where it belonged. With its mate. Chirping and singing to each other.

And then it became a familiar spectacle, that my nephews and nieces would troop down daily to watch and play with, and we got used to it. And had dreams of teaching it our mother tongue. Uh, right up until we remembered it’s caged. So we bought it a bigger cage, and there was more coddling. And feeding, and petting, and cooing. And more mother tongue. We made sure it got covered up with a blanket and slept early. It slept more than we did. Err, or we covered the cage more than we slept. Because it needed more of everything good to survive, you know. Sleep, food, quiet. We shushed each other when it protested over too much noise. We just stared at it in wonder, willing for it to get better.

And it did, and flew around the house, and we thought yay, parrot was healed, and so another release was scheduled. And again, whoosh, right down it went. And so there we were, looking for it beneath the neighbours’ cars. Because we got cats and dogs in the compound, and it could end up becoming a play thing, or you know, meat, for those beasts, the dogs that is. And up and down we went, until we got it. And it was brought back home. Held too lose, it’s gone. Held too tight, it’s gone. It died. It was held too tight. This parrot that we had fed, and played, and lived with for weeks, died in our hands. There was burying to do. And there were memories of death.

So what could we do, but look for another one to replace it. ASAP. And off we went to the street sellers, looking for more parrots to rescue. And another pair came home. We’d be more careful, we vowed. They were thin, emaciated, with dulled wings and looked, just plain unwell. So we thought, this is our opportunity to feed them up properly and release them back to the wild. You know, save one more to plug the one that we’d just lost. But they weren’t getting fatter, and they weren’t eating much. And one was looking downright scary. We would take much much better care of these ones, there was no question about it. So off they went to the vet. A chest infection was the verdict. Lethal in birds.We remained positive. These parrots would get better, whether they wished to or not. There were antibiotics which we faithfully doled out. And the sicker one, we personally delivered through a syringe. Patiently. Painstakingly. It wouldn’t get better. And one morning, about an hour after another bout of forceful medicine guzzling, it was gone. You know, just fallen off its perch, on its face, with its mate staring at it. Silence. More death memories.

There is something about parrots that’s hard to take. They’re beautiful, they’re independent, they’re smarter than some of you. It’s difficult to see these flights of beauty felled down by neglect and poor care, having being trapped in cages. For no reason at all. I mean, the entertainment of man? Really? It’s hard to see life snuffed out from any living creature. But it’s harder to see it right before your eyes.

Not a cat. Not a parrot. Not a father. Not a creature. Life is life. And death is final. Well, not final final. But a denouement nonetheless. No more experiments. We’ve learnt some painful lessons. We now reserve our charity to the tall 2 legged. I don’t know if there are any more parrots in our future. Maybe none. Maybe hundreds. But to the two that we briefly, but lovingly held, and known, you remain unforgotten my darlings. Rest in peace.