Kiwi the parakeet

Friday, February 15, 2013 | post a comment {0}

Today one of our parakeets died. His name was Kiwi, and was one of the first parakeets we ever had. At first it was just him and Romeo, but we got Bubbles and Jezebelle soon after. We each "claimed" a bird at the time and Kiwi was mine. He would sit on my shoulder and climb around if I was wearing the black and white striped sweater he really liked. He also enjoyed sitting on my laptop and scuttling around on the keyboard while I was on the internet. Once we got the other parakeets (Lemongrab, Marshmallow and Eggplant), he was more wary of humans and became feral almost. He didn't really like being touched, and he only interacted with the other birds. We didn't mind though. We just enjoyed watching them talk to each other, fly around, do their normal day to day activities. It was shocking how quickly he passed away. Yesterday he was healthy, and suddenly today he began to breathe heavy and was very limp. He couldn't stand up on his feet and he was crying. After a few frantic hops and attempts to beat his feathers, he just laid down on the carpet and passed away. Even though I wasn't as close to the birds as my little sister, I'm still really sad. I hope she's okay, since she took care and played with them the most. She was there with me, and I wish she hadn't seen him in the last moments.

I don't know what it says about me when I admit that I've never cried when I heard about relatives passing away (I was never very close to them), but I'm crying over this small, green and yellow bird. Near the end he kept crawling towards me and all I could do was place him on my lap and watch his breathing get slower. He kept nudging my hand with his head but I couldn't even scratch his feathers since he would just topple over at the slightest touch. Eventually, he got very frantic for no reason and flapped and dragged himself across the floor. When we went to follow after him he was dead already. Eyes closed, motionless.

This has never happened to me before and I don't know how to deal with this feeling. I want to know if it was something we did wrong. Was he ill and if so are our other birds safe? The other 6 are fine and healthy but what if this happens to them? I don't know guys, I just don't know. I'm so, so sad right now.

Rest in peace, Kiwi.