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Willie - 8th Place
Congratulations to Krickett Robbins and Willie.
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By the time I was 19 years old, I was ready to adopt my third bird. I already had a pretty white budgie named Snowflake, and a cuddly grey cockatiel I called Tess, who came to me with a sprinkling of yellow dots across her chest. I felt sure that the cure to my "Parrot-itis" was something...a little different. And so Willie came into our lives. I adopted Willie, a dutch-blue variant peach-faced lovebird (or so I was told), with her sibling, Betty Sue, a regular peach-faced lovebird. Within a week Betty Sue died, the result of an accidental aspiration by the breeder that turned into pneumonia. But I still had Willie, who I was convinced was a boy. And "he" was the sweetest little bird I had ever seen. It didn't take long for Willie to make friends, and enemies. He and Snowflake became the best of buddies, but Willlie and Tess never learned to get along. Willie ruled the roost. And my heart. By the time Willie was a few months old, we had regular movie nights with him nestled in the center of my chest, Snowflake on one shoulder, and Tess on the other.
One summer morning I uncovered my troupe, settled in at the computer, and started working away. I hadn't noticed how quiet my birds were until half an hour had passed. When I did an inspection of the bird area, I found Snowflake dead on the bottom of her cage. Willie was preening her, and nudging her, trying to get her up. It broke my heart. It broke Willie's heart, too, and for the next two months I had to hand-feed Willie, because he refused to eat, clearly in grief over the loss of his best friend. That two month span was the beginning of a lifetime of saving between my little Willie and myself.
Not long after Willie turned four, "he" laid an egg, and overnight became "she". Boy, was I surprised. I really still didn't know too much at that point about lovebirds, but that pretty white egg in the bottom of the cage spurred a whirlwind of learning, and soon I knew as much as I could about these beautiful African gems.
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Willie went from Willie Mays to Willie Mae, and even found a spot in the heart of my fiance, who soon became my husband. She stuck with me through a wedding, several moves, the acquisition of two more cockatiels, and a crabby old grizzled terrier mix dog, who she loved to torture by landing on his back at just the right moment. Somewhere around Willie's eighth year of life she began to have health problems, and we spent many, many hours together in various care experiments, trying to get her back to her spunky old self. She remained true to her mommy, nestling into my hand, or my chest, or under my chin, content to sleep away the day and the night in the safest place on earth. But even that couldn't save her from the cancer that was silently growing inside her beautiful white tummy. After ten years of devoted companionship, Willie began to grow a tumor on her back. It started small, right around her preening gland. She never seemed to be in any pain, and she ate fine. Her droppings were normal and her energy level was pretty consistent. But I knew she wouldn't live forever. She monopolized a great deal of my time. I couldn't enter a room and not pick her up; I couldn't leave her line of sight, or she cried for me desperately. She had become my love, my light, my life. So when the evening in October came that Willie had a seizure while clutching the front of my shirt, I knew my heart was about to shatter. The next day my husband and I brought her to our vet, and with hearts laden so heavy with grief placed her into the hands of the sweet young intern and said good-bye for the last time. Even now, almost a year later, the tears stream down my face. I miss my little green ball of light so terribly. But I have the 3 'tiels she left behind for company, and I have my memories of my sweet little love. She is buried in our backyard garden, just under the sun tulips, next to the purple pansies with their smiling faces. And she comes to me sometimes, in my dreams. Each time she has come, she is whiter than before. I think that means she's in heaven, and she's ready for me to let go. She's becoming an Angel. My Angel. My Angel Willie.
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