BUDGIE SUICIDE

We don’t know why he did it. He must have been unhappy. It can’t have been easy for him—pecking at the bell, hanging about on the pole, staring at the free birds outside the window, the robins, the gulls. Then every night the cage covered with a smelly dish towel. We wonder now if he’d been lonely for his own kind. Maybe he was pining for some squawky budgie sex. We wonder, too, at the strangeness of caging small birds. Like imprisoned souls, my mother-in-law once said.

Day after day we’d watch the budgie hopping along the pole, cocking his head at our huge cratered faces pressed against the cage. Cheep, cheep, cheep, we’d sing, and then scream happily when he paused, seemingly in communication.

We found him hanging from the bell. He had somehow wrapped the bell cord around his neck.

We wonder if our monstrous singing drove him mad.