What made us good friends ~ you and I?
I think I know the reason why...
The best in me and the best in you...
Held each other because they knew...
That always and always since time began...
Our being friends was part of God's plan...
This is a poem that I wrote in High School... One of my classmates liked it and asked me for it. I wish I had not been stupid enough to give it to him, because years later, he published it and did not give me credit for it! OMGG @ that is NOT the only time that I have written something that I have not been given credit for....
But as you can see, I still remember the poem, word for word... And it seems only fitting that I should dedicate it to Tidbit in this post...
When I left my job with the Mentally Ill, a client who looks like Patrick Dempsey gave me a male cockatiel. He mowed yards for a living, and before I left, he said that he wanted to take me to lunch. I can only imagine his sacrifice to cut yards just to take me to lunch, but he insisted and said that it meant a lot to him to do that for me. Billy was one of my favorite clients. It was hard to say goodbye ~ for both of us. The last thing he told me was to take care of his bird...
The male cockatiel loved to dance and he would always whistle at me when I would get dressed in the morning, so I named him Mad Max Over the Caged Dome...
Another client raised cockatiels. I am ashamed to say that I don't remember her name, but she was the one who gave me Tidbit. Tidbit was a young bird. She was handfeed as a baby. She already had a name, so I didn't change it...
Tidbit and Max were always fighting, because Max wanted sex and Tidbit wasn't old enough to mate... But that didn't stop Max from being his usual cheerful fun self. Years passed and then all of a sudden, I hear this noise coming from the cage. They were having sex all of the time. OMG @ did they every take a break?! Well, it was about that time that Tidbit started to produce eggs. Max insisted that Tidbit should sit on the eggs, but she had never been a mother before, so she just thought he was being macho about it. They started fighting over who should sit on the eggs. One day before Thanksgiving, I found Max at the bottom of the cage. Tidbit had pecked him to death because he kept bothering her about sitting on the eggs... Fortunately, my daughter and my son-in-law came for a visit that year and my son-in-law took Max out of the apartment. Tidbit went into a deep depression. She wouldn't eat and she wouldn't drink water. She just sat on the eggs and was very sad. I had to take the eggs out and try to help her out of the depression. She survived, but now, she was a widow... It was sad for me when Max died, especially, because I had promised Billy that I would take care of him...
Tidbit has been my friend and my companion for over ten years. She always alerted me when someone was near the apartment and she was better than a fire alarm, too! She always let me know when she needed birdseed or water. Sometime she would sing pretty and other times, she would just make a lot of noise. LOL... Like Max, she was a character. She loved attention. Sometimes I would blow bubbles at her to catch her reaction. She was a fun bird. She brought me much joy and I will miss her terribly.
I do not know the mysteries of how Tidbit died, because she died in the feed tray with her body hanging over. It is a visual that I wish I could erase from my memory. Also, because I live alone, I had to take her out of my apartment by myself... That was so hard for me, because I didn't think I would be able to do it... I had to close the blanket over her cage and I took her to the trashbin, cage and all... I am feeling guilty about not being able to give her a burial, but without help, there is no way that I could have touched her dead body to put her into the ground... I feel sad to have to put a friend into the trash, because she was not trash at all. She was a treasure that I will remember always.
