I’ve often thought that I have a way with birds, of the feathered variety. I wasn’t a bad looking lad in my youth ( I will try to prove this by adding a photo here, if I can get access back to my site, if you’re reading this then I am back on line, after a traumatic morning of deprivation). As I was saying, I was a good looking young chap but terribly shy, an attribute I carry to this very day, shyness that is, not good looking.
I still blush when nubile young maidens come up to me and fondle my nether regions whilst whispering “Take me, big boy” into my shell like. Or at least, I think I would if it actually happened.
Anyway, to get back to Avians, the first bird I ever owned was a budgie, bought for me by my next door neighbour, along with a cage and a stick of millet, I think it was eaten by a neighbourhood cat (the budgie not the millet).
My Dad caught the cat in the kitchen and from what he told me later, he closed the doors and chased it around, at one stage it was defying the laws of gravity and was racing around closer to the ceiling than the floor. Whenever it was close to the ground, he helped it along with a hob-nailed boot up the jacksie.
Before you write to the RSPCA protesting, it should be remembered that this was 50 years ago and back then you could get away with that sort of thing. This taught two sentient beings a lesson, the cat never entered the Skull domicile again and I (I’m sorry to say this, if you are a feline devotee) have a lifelong detestation of pussy cats.
This first one was followed by a succession of other Budgies, as a family we didn’t like to see them caged all the time and used to let them fly around the ‘living room’ during the day. I must add here that we only ever had one budgie at any one time, not a flock of them flying around like a bunch of homing pigeons, the house wasn't big enough for that.
This habit led to some unfortunate deaths, one was stepped on by my Mum, another flew off when I answered the front door with it perched on my shoulder. The ingrate took off without even a cheep of farewell and no doubt perished at the hands or beaks of the local sparrows.
The best of the lot had quite a considerable vocabulary, mainly thanks to Mum, and even got drunk one Christmas, when Dad shared a dram or two of Jamaican Rum and Orange with it, he ended up putting it in it’s cage where it lay flat on it’s back, I’m not sure whether or not it had a hangover when it eventually woke up, as I’ve never been fluent in ‘Budgie’. I’d like to say it died of natural causes, but it didn’t, I won’t go into that it’s too painful to contemplate.
To get back to me and why not? I’m writing this stuff!. One day I was walking to Sunday School, when I saw a bunch of kids in a circle. I went to see what was happening and they were surrounding a Rook and were too scared to approach it and were just about to start throwing stones at it.
I didn’t like that, so I went up to it and put my arm out and it hopped on, somebody had obviously tamed it, because it just sat there and eyed me with it’s beady eyes. This was the greatest excuse ever to get out of Sunday School, so I took it home.
I built it a perch and a tray to eat and drink and fed it a few slices of Mother’s Pride bread and gave it some water and we cawed at each other for a while. It obviously felt at home because it stayed there. In fact it stayed for about six months. It became so tame that it used to peck on my bedroom window to wake me up to feed it, before I went on my paper round.
Unfortunately I had to leave it, while we went on our summer holidays to Southport or Morecambe, or some other such exotic tourist destination for a couple of weeks. I gave instructions to a kid next door on how and when to feed it, but he was scared of it. I must admit that this was understandable, it was a large black bird, the sort associated with death and witches and had a diabolic gleam in it’s eyes and a vicious looking beak, with talons to match.
When I got home it had disappeared for ever, I prefer to think that it had gone to live in a nearby rookery and lived happily ever after, raising little baby rooks with a loving lady rook. Rather than thinking that the kid had taken to it with a piece of ‘four by two’, after it attempted to savage him. He vehemently denied any such act on his part
At the moment I’ve only got four birds, a lunatic Rainbow Lorikeet, a Cockatiel and a couple of budgies. The lorikeet terrorises the other three most of the time, the male budgie terrorises the cockatiel and sometimes the lorikeet and the cockatiel terrorises the female budgie, the whole lot are terrified of me. One normal big happy family really.
Since I wrote this. the Rainbow Lorikeet disappeared on a dark and stormy night and the female budgie met a tragic end at the beak of it’s mate, so I’m down to two and the dog hates them both, which means they are confined to their cages.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull (The (ex)-birdman of Albion).
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
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