Dead Budgies

When Polly, our pet budgie, started looking a bit peaky, my dad intervened. He added a few drops of brandy to its water dish. For the next two or three days, it was very active, happy, and cheerful. Only later did it occur to me that the little green bird was probably quite drunk. Sometime later, we found it reclining feet up on the bottom of the cage. For years, I assumed it was dead, but someone later told me that it might have passed out. In any event, it was dead enough for the store to replace it without having to launch into any Monty Python skits about dead parrots.

I began to suspect that the replacement budgie, also called Polly, was an inferior bird when it was discovered that it could not fly. It plummeted straight to the floor. That was the only time in my life that I appreciated the bright orange shag. Otherwise, my memories of that carpet are of burns to various body parts - and I even have a friend who ended up with carpet burn on his face from that carpet. But, that happened in the teenage years, well after we gave up thinking that our family was capable of looking after birds or any sort of animal for that matter.

Budgie number 2 died within 10 days.

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