Mr. S found Lucy in the bottom of her cage this morning, with her distraught buddy Oliver looking on.
Lucy was a baby cinnamon cockatiel when we bought “her” to be a companion to Oliver, an adult gray cockatiel that we’d rescued from a too-small cage in Wal-Mart, in 1990. I say “Her” because we were still learning about birds back then, and though the clerk had told us that Lucy was female, we came to realize by watching her behavior that she was actually a male. Nevertheless, since she was named for my grandmother, and we’d already come to think of here as female, she remained “she” to us all her life.
Oliver was extremely shy, but warmed to Lucy. She was quite the singer, with some very distinctive songs – we even use one of them to get each other’s attention across crowded stores. Soon they were singing duets, and once you got them going it was hard to stop them. They were good buddies.
We’re going to move Oliver to a more populated part of the house, and there will be a cremation this weekend. I don’t feel bad for Lucy – she was 12 years old, which is getting up there for a cockatiel, and quit frankly we were starting to wonder which one would go first. But I sure feel sad for Mr. Oliver, who has lost his best friend. And Oliver won’t be getting a new friend, because Mr. S developed a dust allergy a few years after we got the birds, and cockatiels are about the dustiest birds around. But maybe he’ll be happy with just our company for his remaining years.
So long, Lucy. We’ll miss you, pretty birdie.
