My pet budgie passed away today... It was painful and it was heart wrenching because I knew this day would come sooner or later :( I've had this budgie since I was in Primary 5 and she was my birthday present on my 11th birthday. I still remembered how excited and happy I was to be able to become a budgie owner. All the possibilities of having hand tame her and teach her tricks. It was all the joy for an 11 year old boy to welcome a new feathered friend into the house... A friend who never judged and would always stay by you no matter what.
The years went by and I didn't managed to tame her after all. Somehow I just couldn't do it right and she was always pecking my hand when I tried to get close. I was afraid to let her out of her cage as well. There was this one time when she just hurt herself when I allowed her to fly around the house. It left a deep gash on her forehead because she knocked into one of the metal curtain supporting thingy s. I had 3 budgies then... 1 green (the oldest), 1 blue (her companion) and then her (white). The 3 got along well and like all humans bickered and fought at times... but at the end of the day... those 3 always huddled together to sleep at night on a single perch in their cage.
But like a living things... life fades and disappears... First went the oldest who was green... It was a painful moment for my family. She passed away one morning when we woke up having lived for 9 years with us. She was the only one that followed us all the way from our old home to the new one. A few years later... the blue one died in his sleep as well. Yet again... there was another scar in our lives. I will not forget the day when the blue one was shivering on the floor in his last moments and the white one was just chirping next to it... as though sad to see her companion and last friend leave. The house became quieter... and after the departure of the green and the blue... the last white one became much quieter. Even till today... she rarely chirped as much as she used to do.
There were times when I wondered if she was lonely... when she chirped occasionally when wild birds flew by. I felt bad keeping a bird that belonged to the sky in a cage; yet... I knew that a domesticated parakeet would not last and survive in the wild.
Budgie (that was the name I gave her even though she was literally a budgie) had a tenacious life force. There was a period when my dad wanted to put the bird cage outside the house so that she can enjoy the wind. But to our horror... it only took a few days before misfortune struck and we would find her entire cage wrecked and spilled all over the corridor. We feared the worst... that budgie had been eaten by a cat or tortured by some sadistic person. But no... budgie was a survivor... just as we were about to give up on her... we heard a faint chirp from below the shoe rack and that's when we found budgie all soaked in her own blood and shivering in one corner with broken wings. For days, we kept her in a shoebox with a towel to keep her warm. I honestly thought she would not survive but she proved me wrong as she was able to return to her cage a week later and everything seemed fine again except for the blood stains on her feathers.
She proved to me the tenacity for life. How one does not simply yield to fate and that she trusted her owners to rescue her even when they were despaired...
She continued to live on for many years. Budgie saw me grow up from an 11 year old primary school kid to when I became a teenager to when I shaved my head to become an NS man and then to today when I entered University. She saw me grew up to be the person I am today while I saw her grow old from when I first received her as a budgie that was a few months old. I hated myself for not spending more time with her as I grew up and became stressed with school, relationships and work. I forgot to take some time to look back and notice how old and frail she had become. :(
She saw me grow old as much as I followed her through her golden years. In every memory in my life there was a part she occupied. Every morning I will feed her before going off to school and every night when I will just check on her before going to sleep. She had been with me for so long...
An average budgie of my breed could only live 7-8 years. But my budgie lived to an incredible age of 13 years. Sometimes I wonder if her budgie friends that passed on earlier were watching over her. Even in those times when she was covered in blood and shivering below that shoe rack... how they guided her to chirp so that we could save her life!
I have never had a friend who had been in my life for more than 13 years. Budgie was a bird but she was the longest friend I had ever had...
I laid her to rest below the tree where I buried all her friends... I knew I had not been the best of owners :( But I wish from the bottom of my heart... that she'll be able to find happiness and a better life in the next.
Things will feel lonely for the days ahead when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep. Something will surely be missing.... I don't want to have pets anymore... Not because I don't want them... But because I really really love them :( that is why whenever they leave me... it really hurts so much... just as much as I type all these in tears and memories of budgie overflowing. How the departure of a long time friend will forever be remembered... as fondly as I remembered the joy and excitement when I first received her on my 11th birthday... 5 January 2002~
