Stone passed away this morning. After two months almost to the day of fighting the good fight, she is gone. She had been getting noticeably weaker these past few days, dragging her limp, useless right foot around, unable to fly even between perches a few inches apart anymore, but still eating and occasionally fweeping. Then, this morning, climbing up the wall of the cage, she fell, and she must have broke something or ruptured something or something else because that was that. We tried to put her back on a perch but she returned to the floor of the cage. We nestled her and cuddled her for two hours. We proffered millet, but she wouldn’t eat. Shortly after 10 AM she began having what looked like a seizure. Not knowing how long it would last, we raced to the vet to give her a merciful end. She died in Tracy’s hand seconds before the doctor came in the room. She was four years old.

I think we did the right thing. We gave her every chance. Two months, two vets. A week-long stay at Kensington during our week of exile from the Storm of the Millenium. Steroids to slow the assumed swelling, antibiotics to fight any infection, fluids to flush her kidney. A second opinion from our vet at Roaring Brook. Allopurinol to treat for gout on the chance that the growths inside her were uric acid deposits and not tumors. Celebrex compound, an NSAID, which I administered to her nightly with a tiny little syringe, much to her annoyance. In the early weeks I explored surgery, scouring the web for information, but my own research and both veterinarians indicated that surgery on a parakeet was nothing more than a very expensive, very bloody, and very painful form of euthanasia. So we treated. And we waited. And now it’s over.

We had some good times together. Some quality time. She would sit on our shoulders and nuzzle against our necks. We were closer to her in the last few weeks than probably ever. So there’s that.

I know there are some of you scratching your heads that anyone could be so close to a parakeet. By way of explanation, I offer this: We can’t have kids. We can’t even have cats or dogs, due to my allergies. So we have birds. And we pour that latent energy, that familial affection, into our birds. The emotional attachment is as strong as anything I’ve ever experienced. And the grief – pre and post – is like nothing I’ve felt in aeons, if ever. No joke, I’ve cried more tears, by volume, in the past two months than I think I have in the rest of my life combined. It has been absolutely fucking brutal watching this creature I’ve bonded with and cared for be slowly taken away.

Tracy got her for me almost four years ago, for Christmas. I thought she was a dartboard at first, judging by the size and shape of the box. Instead, I unwrapped it and found a parakeet starter cage. And of course it made sense. My wife is an excellent gift-giver. I’d cultivated an enthusiastic following among the neighborhood birds, what with our vast array of feeders around the house. So why not have an indoor bird?

The next day we went to Petco and picked her out. There were so many to choose from, in dazzling blues and purples and whites and flourescent yellows. But I wanted the bog-standard green/yellow one making a ruckus. Something in me knew she was for me. When we got her home, we put her in the cage and she immediately climbed to the middle perch and set herself dead center and stared at me. I remember thinking, vividly, “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?”

She was, but in the best way. Not for nothing was her first name “Moody”. The first few weeks she’d alternate between backing her ass into the cage floor on the corner, trying to hide behind the birdie bathtub, with bouts of insane activity. Tall Bird (they do that when they’re scared). Typewriter Bird (lateral back-and-forth skittering across the perch). Happy Bird (clinging to the perch, flapping the wings at full power, as if to say “I’M A BIRD! I’M A BIRD! I’M A BIRD!”). She introduced us to all these behaviors.

Eventually, we finger tamed her. Late nights in the spare room playing “Step Up!” until she wearied of us broke her to the finger. Alas, we made the rookie mistake of letting her sit on our shoulders. This is bad, because the bird gets the idea at that height that it can boss you around. Many, many sharp pecks to the ears let us know that she intended to be the Alpha Bird of her new flock of three. Which she was, the Alpha Bird, even as the flock would later grow.

The name “Stone” came from something that popped into my head that I used to sing to her whenever I’d come in the room: “BIRD BIRD bird bird birdie McBIRDstone!” (to the tune of “Rock’n'Roll High School”). No idea where I got it from. But it stuck. Birdstone became her name. Then just Stone. Then Stonie. Occasionally Estonia. I’ll let Tracy tell the story about the Estonia song.

She loved the Beatles. Nothing got her fweeping and acking like the Beatles. If I ever wanted to perk her up, I’d put onSergeant Pepper’s. By the first guitar riff she’d be on a tear. Even this morning, nestled in Tracy’s bathrobe, in her last hours on this Earth, that song got a couple of peeps out of her. She liked a lot of different music – always upbeat stuff, she never cared for my hangover selections – but she loved the Beatles.

My favorite memory of Stone is from a weekend night a few months after we got her. Tracy and I were up in the office eating pizza. The cage was open, as it always was when we were home. We don’t believe in clipping, and our birds, fully flighted, have the run of the place. Anyhow, I’m sitting at my desk with a piece of pizza in front of me, minding my own business, surfing the internet, and suddenly there’s a flutter and a bird by my hand. She stepped up onto the crust, stuck her head out, and started tugging at a piece of cheese. I was impressed by her audacity.

That first summer we got her a companion, Ozzy (named not for the rock star, but for Ozzy Lusth, multi-season Survivor contestant and daredevil extraordinaire, just like our second ‘keet (the daredevil part)). It was unfair, it seemed, to leave her alone eight hours a day, every day, with just music to keep her company. Birds are highly intelligent and very social. They get depressed when they’re lonely. They’re even known to hurt themselves, plucking feathers in protest. Anyhow, that’s why we got her Ozzy. And then, later, we grew the flock to four, adding Abbie (short for the Abominable Snow Bird) and Monet (so named for her watercolor hues).

Stone grew more distant from us once she had other birds. They gravitate towards their own kind, like every other living thing on this planet. Humans will do in a pinch for flock mates, but we’re not the same. She was still the Emmisary, though. Still more than willing to get up on our finger and come with. She remained tame for us. As did we, for her.

She was a wonderful, beautiful creature, and a good friend, and she will be missed more than her tiny self could ever have comprehended. Goodbye, my little girl.