Maggie--RIP

Our parakeet, Maggie died yesterday morning. Bern found her walking on the bottom of the cage and when she looked next, little Maggie was dead.

On the heels of the death of Luke, the cat, a couple of months ago, we're down to sharing our lives with just one creature: Bela, the Puli. I don't believe we've only had one creature since before Josh and Mimi were born. We've never had more than one dog at a time, but there were a lot of years here in Cheshire when we had 4 or more cats, an assortment of rodents and the two birds--Rainy and Maggie. Here's the story of how we got the birds.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Rainy

My daughter found a parakeet on the streets of Manhattan one morning a couple of years ago. She was green and drenched by rain. So Mimi caught her and put her in her pocket and since you can buy anything at any time in Manhattan, found a cage and food and took her to her office.

She named her Rainy.

Eventually, as folks sometimes inherit things from their kids before the kids ever inherit things from their parents--good luck to Josh and Mimi finding anything we leave behind...we mean to burn the candle at both ends and leave this world with about as little as we joined it with....--we got Rainy and another bird Mimi bought to keep Rainy company.

Rainy and Maggie now live in our kitchen and sing/chatter/scream most of the time. You get used to it after a while and can still hear NPR above the din. The radio is by their cage and their cage is so high the bottom of it is at eye level because we have Luke the Cat.

I love their noise. How wonderful.

And it has rained for two days.

I wonder if Rainy, hearing the rain through the window, remembers when she was lost and then was found?

It really doesn't matter in the long run, but I wonder.

Then there was Stinky, the rat Mimi brought us from Indiana, for goodness sake, after a summer intern job....Another story all together.....

But bless her for bringing us creatures to love.....

 *******

(Rainy died while we were in Baltimore a couple of years ago. Maggie never missed her, in fact, she seemed glad to be alone. We turned the radio to WSHU and Maggie sang with the classical music. She was mostly in tune.

Now, I wonder, will we go back to having WNPR--the Public Radio talk station on in the kitchen as it is in our cars? I hope not--at least until after the November elections. Classical music calms the soul while any and all mentions of Donald Trump rile me up....)

Good bye, sweet Maggie. Bern buried her under the bird bath in our back yard. In death, she'll be surrounded by birds, wild ones that are free....