The Bird

When I was younger, maybe 5th or 6th grade, I got a Cockatiel for Christmas. His name was Piper and he was a sweet bird. That is he was sweet until Steven and Brian tortured the poor thing and turned it against everone. If you think I'm kidding you should ask them, they still laugh about it. Anyway, Piper did a lot of interesting things. Once he ate a black pearl after bending the earing it was in while still attached to my moms ear. Another time he flew away and ended up landing on a neighbors bald head while he was outside in the garden. Finally he met his demise when left outside in his cage one night. He got eaten by a raccoon. There are differing accounts as to what really happened but he was dead. Well...

Today Katherine and Natalie and I were leaving my salon to go home. As we stepped into the parking lot a hear a bird and it sounded familiar. I looked down and there was a Cockatiel in the parking lot! Just chillin', hangin' out. Flash backs from my childhood swarmed through my head and me having a soft spot in my heart for animals and not wanting it to meet the same fate as Piper, we tried to catch it. It took a few minutes and a piece of chocolate cookie but I got him. He was squalking and trying to bite me. Poor thing didn't realize I was there to help him! So we have this bird, now what do we do with it? Of course, there's a pet store right around the corner! They'll surely take the bird. We walk into the store and this girl tell us they can't take it because they don't know where it's been and it could disease the other birds. Whatever. So what did we do? We left it in the Bird World parking lot for some other person to deal with. Yep. Serious. Now I have guilt.