bunrab | The Beak is gone

S went downstairs to give Fred the Grumpy Lop Bunny his medication, and The Beak was dead.

The Beak was a cockatiel. He was 18 years old. We got him in 1988, and we sometimes called him "the $95,000 bird" because when we got him, we realized we had no space to put his cage - we had to throw stuff out and stack storage boxes 6 high to clear up floor space for his cage and its stand and his food and stuff. So we had to buy a bigger house, which we did the following month.

We named him Mozart at first, but his complete lack of anything resembling song soon led us to the conclusion that he was no Mozart. His loud shrieks were quite merciless if one was not devoting 100% of one's attention to him, and so he became Ming the Merciless. That stuck to some extent. But mostly we just referred to him as The Beak, as in The Lord and Master of The House, which is certainly what he thought he was. To his face, we called him Beaky Bird, and Beaky Sneaky Bird, and Beaky Shrieky Bird, and Beaky Peeky Sneaky Shrieky Bird.

He loved being scritched on the neck. Also, getting a clump of hay in a clip on the side of his cage, when we were giving hay to the rabbits and guinea pigs, so that he could beak the hay into minute fragments and fling them all over. Shredding things and flinging them were his favorite activities. Parsley was another favorite.

Parrot-family birds are quite intelligent, and a three-ounce cockatiel is considerably smarter, as well as much longer lived, than a three-ounce hamster, for instance. When one looks for information about the life span of a cockatiel, some places say 10-12 years with 15 being considered extremely old, while others say that 20 years is normal, and some have lived to 25. The usual concensus is a 15 to 20 year life span, so by that regard, The Beak lived out a normal life. He has been a part of our lives for so long, though - it's like having a kid! He's been around as long as most people's kids are before they go off to college! (He was certainly a lot less trouble as a teenager; whether he was noisier is open for debate.)

When he was 14 years old, he turned out to be a she - he laid an egg. He did that twice more, the same year, then stopped again. We were used to referring to him as "he" so we continued. He had a lot of male behavioral traits, except for not learning to talk or sing, and his crest was a masculine color; since he didn't lay an egg till he was 14, I suspect he didn't have normal female hormonal levels, whatever those might be for a bird.

Just like many children, he went through picky phases with food. One week, he'd like ZuPreem red and green bits but fling all the yellow ones out of his cage; the next week he'd eat the yellow bits but carry all the green ones over to his water dish and drown them.

He was fine up until the end, or seemed fine, as so many small animals are. He was riding around on S's shoulder for the afternoon a couple of days ago, and last night he was shrieking as usual when S was covering his cage and turning out the lights for the evening. This morning S was off to a Marine Band concert in a hurry and I was sleeping in; Beaky Bird must have passed away around lunch time.

It's not going to be the same around here without The Beak. RIP, Sneaky Peeky Beaky Bird.