Parakeets (part one)

On Saturday afternoon, Ben and I went to Pete's Pets, a pet store we like especially because on top of the sign are six-foot-tall dinosaurs. We were at Pete's Pets because of an event a week before. The weekend before, on a free Friday afternoon, we had walked casually into PetsMart, or PetCo, or one of those places, and fallen victim to the idea of having a pet.

I don't really know what made us think that going to PetCo was a good idea, because, really, it wasn't. The first thing you see, walking into this store, are a tidy row of little cages containing cats up for adoption. Each cage has its own little profile of the cat. Hi! My name is... Sam/Peaches/FiFi! A cute little cat with the sweetest temperment in the world. I was found... wandering around the desert alone/pregnant in someone's backyard/half starved trying to save a drowning child...and I want to be your cat!
Great.

I mean, it's a fairly well-known fact that I have had disastrous affairs with pets...the turtle who literally decomposed waiting for me and my little sister to clean its tank, the slew of pets (including my beloved cat Lilith, my brother's bird Nipper, and Mandy's ancient rabbit) that died or disappeared while my parents were in Scotland visiting my brother, the adopted Irish setter, Darcy, that ran away after only two weeks of snotting all over the walls of our house. Chags, our dog, is the only one who remains alive, yet unscathed from whatever disaster involving my negligence awaits him. Maybe children shouldn't have pets.

So, the cats at PetCo were really, really cute...I just wanted to scoop up FiFi, pay the $100 adoption fee, and get out of there. But Ben's landlords don't want him to have a cat. Ben's landlords are a peculiar breed of neighbor. They are perfectly nice, obviously upstanding citizen types, and very thoughtful of Ben, but there's something just kind of... weird about them. For example: they don't want Ben to have a cat because they have a couple of cats themselves and don't want there to be any tension or hostility between their cats and Ben's. The thing about this is, there are cats and dogs running around Santa Fe all the time. Their many neighbors have cats, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Anyway, no cats.

We moved on in the pet store and looked at the fish, which were very beautiful but couldn't go very far to replace the cat we would never have. One of the types of fish, with a sign saying AGGRESSIVE posted over the top of the tank, was really cute, though, and looked like it was constantly smiling at you. This sounds really creepy, I know, but the fish's smiling was actually about 80% friendly and cute and only 20% creepy/disorienting. It was a parrot fish. We looked around at all the crap you had to buy to keep a parrot fish, Ben thought about the fact that he didn't feel very comfortable keeping as his only pet an animal that doesn't even get oxygen the same way we do and has a cute-and-cuddly factor of zero, and we moved on.

Past the reptiles...woosh...past the ferret toys and guinea pigs...woosh,woosh...to the bird room. As background information, it is interesting that Ben said over break that he "doesn't like birds." This came up because we spent A LOT of time on the phone together over Christmas break and Birdie, my brother Ben K's parakeet, kept up a pretty steady monologue some of that time. So I knew- Ben doesn't like birds. It took about...hmmm...three or four minutes in the bird room before he'd changed his mind and was picking up "care sheets" about doves, parrots, finches, parakeets- anything they had.

Parakeets are appealing because:
1) They are small.
2) They are cute.
3) They cost $20 (the parrots we saw were between $500-$1400).
4) They are little parrots, which is a cute idea.

Ben started saying suspicious things like, "I think having a bird could be really fun." "Don't you think a parakeet would make a fun pet?" This from the guy who'd walked into a pet store for no particular reason only twenty minutes ago, and who didn't like birds. Because I doubted his self-knowledge and sincerity, I was hesitant. Besides, I really wanted a cat.

When we left PetCo, however, the thought of a cute little parakeet was clearly weighing on Ben's mind. He spent much of the remainder of the afternoon lamenting his predicament: not allowed to have a cat, not sure about the virtues of the parakeet. The week passed and when, the next Saturday, he still wanted a parakeet, I'd come around and was just as excited by the idea as he was.

I had reservations. For one thing, parakeets are supposed to live for 10-15 years easily. I am pretty sure that I don't want a parakeet for that long. For another, Ben K's bird, Birdie, while an incredibly cute, fun, and personable bird, has revealed the truth about parakeets to me. They may cost only $20, and the idea of having a "little parrot" may be a nice one, but they are undeniably noisy little suckers, and they flap around kitchens and dining room tables whenever they please, without consideration for whether the time is convenient for its friends, Ben and Julie, or not.

Ben said the bird would be his.

"Ok!" I said, "Let's go get a bird!" Not only was I relieved to know that I was not absolutely bound to the animal for more than a decade, I also figured there was much less chance of killing the animal if it was technically not my animal.

So we were in Pete's Pets on Saturday, and we picked out a very sweet-looking parakeet with a purple breast and grey wings. We took the bird home in a box hardly as big as he is, hurried home, set up all the trappings: his little cage, his little bell, his millet, a little spinny mirror toy, and eagerly let him out.