Sometimes a story just needs to be told. Truth is better than fiction.
Saving a parakeet from Hell!
My wife and I returned home one Saturday afternoon from 'Theocratic activities' to find the dining room in a shambles. The budgie cage was toppled into the middle of the floor with a few indigo feathers and some bird seed about the area. No sign of the bird. We searched the house high and low looking for him. On the drapes, under the sofa and tables, in the bathroom. No bird to be found. The Cheshire look on the cat's face was convincing enough that he had dined well, and was now digesting the dime-store pet. We gave up the search, chastened the cat, and cleaned up the mess.
I went outside, finished changing the oil in our car. Then, as was our less-than-green custom at the time, went inside, retrieved the garbage from the kitchen receptacle, and took both the oil and the trash to the burn barrel in our backyard. We were miles from town, and I used the oil that I changed often as an accelerator for the refuse. I dropped in the plastic bag, fully sealed with drawstrings, then poured the oil over it, reached into my shirt pocket and found the matches - lighting the whole thing from the bottom.
Just as I was starting to walk away from the emerging inferno in front of me, a wiggle inside the bag caught my eye. My first thought was that I had caught a mouse at play in our kitchen trashcan, and now he would pay the ultimate price for his meal. Then it hit me - THE BIRD! I had but a nanosecond to react before the flames would make him into something akin to cousin 'Roasted Duck' - on a smaller and uglier scale.
Reacting quickly, I plunged my hand through the plastic bag, wrapping up the bird and a few bits of garbage in a fist, tearing him free of the plastic prison-inferno that had just momentarily begun to rage beneath it's wings. In return for my kindness, he promptly plunged his talons and his ample beak into my hand. The talons into the flesh of my palm, and the beak tautly sunk into my hand - precisely where the thumb meets the hand. Momentarily I was running, screaming in pain to the house, trying to keep the now freed budgie from making a rough surgical removal of my precious opposing digit, while at the same time, keeping hold on him so that I could also save his life while he attempted to take mine.
Frantically, my wife met me in the kitchen as I entered, afraid that I had done some foolish thing - like set myself on fire - from the commotion she heard issuing from my terror stricken voice. She saw that I was holding some oily plastic in my hand, and it took a moment to realise that what I held out was actually moving. With some effort, we forced the bird to release my thumb, and then began to realise that this bird resembled those we had seen pulled from the sea following the Exxon oil-spill. He was a mess.
An hour, and bottle of dish-washing soap later, something similar to a now oily parakeet emerged from the suds. He looked like one might feel after having swum free of a sinking oil barge. We doubted he would live. My hand looked like it might recover with time, but it looked like this poor bird never would. But the next several weeks he spent most of his time preening off the balance of the oil and surfactants and began to slowly regain his natural blue color.
I don't know how much good any of that did. A few weeks later - dead. Likely a victim of the preening. At least he died looking good.
When I think about this incident I can still relive the pain of his bite. I laugh till I cry when I do. In retrospect - it would have been better for all to have just fed the bird to the cat.
Jeff