Suddenly my dad had developed an interest in birds. Now he would have loved a parrot or cockatoo but due to money constraints, all he could afford was a budgie. I don’t know if you have ever had or seen a budgie but it is just about the most useless bird-like thing ever created. It looks like a miniature parrot. When I say miniature, I am talking about 5-6 inches long, maximum. They are pseudo colorful and have no interesting attributes. All they do is eat, shit, flap around their tiny cages, and make a screech-like chirping sound with no redeeming attirbutes. My dad brought one home one night in this tiny box covered with breathing holes and pictures of much more extravagant birds. I remember when he bought the first one I saw the box and pictured this grocery store with an entire shelf covered in these boxes of birds. He always made sure to show my mom in front of us so she couldn’t outwardly express her distaste for this new pet she knew she would end up looking after. Mike would spend hours trying to teach this useless creature how to talk and do tricks, but nothing ever happened. It would just keep chirping away and he would eventually give up and grab a drink.
Happily, we went through several of them. You see, if they ever escaped they’re cage(which was often) they would quickly head for the outside, which usually meant flying full force into one of our many closed windows. (This was one of the only pleasures of having a budgie because a dead budgie is a really cool thing). When they fly top speed into windows they break their neck and their entire body goes stiff except for their now broken neck. At this point we would pick them up and watch their heads flop back and forth. This lead to hours of entertainment, at least until mom found us and made us drop them before we caught dead bird disease. What finally ended my dad’s budgie love was the morning my brother covered the entire kitchen floor in cereal and then let all the birds loose to feed on the corn flakes. They all of course took this opportunity to fly into the windows and break all their necks…
