Millie

I've been thinking about Millie a lot lately.  He was my cockatiel, who lived with me for about 7 years.

Millie was a boy.  Guessing the sex of a neutral coloured bird can be something of a guessing game, and Millie was a grey cockatiel.  He underwent something of a colour change in his third year and developed some yellow tail feathers, after which it occurred to me that he was rather colourful for a female that had never laid an egg.  Thus, an emergency trip to the vet (this is not the sort of thing one takes in a laid back manner) and the confirmation was in.  Millie was a boy.

I thought of changing his name, but he could already say it.  As far as I'm concerned, if a pet goes to the trouble to learn to say their own name, that'll be their name for life.  So, Millie the boy lived on.

I should backtrack a bit and say that Millie was not a planned pet.  I found him in a pet store, stuffed into a canary cage, where he'd fallen off the too-narrow perch and been clotheslined between two other perches so many time that his tail feathers had fallen off.  I took him home that night, and have boycotted that chain of stores ever since.  I had finches at the time, but had never had - or been exposed to - larger birds at that point.

I didn't know that most cockatiels live their whole lives in cages and never learn to talk.  In this case, what I didn't know was to Millie's benefit.  I let his wing and tail feathers grow back, and gave him supervised time out of his cage.  When I was home, Millie was usually on my shoulder.  If not there, he was on a birdie-game table that my dad made for him, or hanging out in his open cage.    I was as attached to him as I am to my current pets, and had him with me all the time when I was at home.

 ... Except when I was cooking.  There were too many flyby thefts, as he flew into the kitchen and grabbed pieces of his favorite veggies off the cutting board or frying pan.  For his safety sake, I had to confine him when I was cooking.

It wasn't long before Millie started imitating sounds.  Then he started repeating a few words, and before I knew it, he had a vocabulary of about 20 words (which, as I'm writing this, I'm disappointed to realize that I don't remember what most of them are.)  His greeting was the most common.  Any time that anybody entered the room, they were greeted with an enthusiastic "HI MILLIE!"; which they were, of course, expected to repeat.    Birds tend to pick up emphasized words, so it's probably a good thing that he picked up my happy tone, and not something I let slip in the midst of a snit.

That's not to say that he never learned anything bad.  When Millie was about a year old, we moved from the house I was sharing with a friend into an apartment.  I was so happy about finally having some privacy (her  5 year old girl didn't respect closed doors) that as soon as everything was dropped off at the apartment and everybody left, I hopped into the shower.  I didn't close the door - because I didn't have to -  and I quickly learned that I'd also forgotten to unpack the towels.  The steam from my shower set off the smoke alarm, and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find a towel and turn off the alarm.  Millie figured out that an alarm was a noise that would get quick attention, and went to work mastering it.  There after, if he felt that he was ignored for too long, alarms would go off.  So much so that my sister was once fooled enough to go looking for the fire.

Another noise that he mastered was the sound of running water.  More specifically, he could do a eerily realistic imitation of the sound of peeing.  Millie learned that after my alarm went off in the morning, I'd stop in the washroom and then I'd come out to open up his cage.  So, every morning when he woke up with the sun, he "peed" until my alarm went off.  The peeing sound (described to most guests as running water) very quickly became a favorite party trick.

His best trick, though - without a doubt - was his imitation of my laugh.  Millie could do a spot on imitation of my laugh.  I don't know about you, but I can't sit beside anybody who is laughing and not laugh myself.  We'd feed off of each other, and laugh our butts off on a regular basis.  He'd start to bounce on my shoulder and begin to chuckle.  That'd crack me up, and I'd get going.  The harder I laughed, the louder he'd get.  Before long, he'd switch over from a chuckle to a belly laugh and before I knew it I'd be in danger of peeing myself.  Every single day, that happened.  It's a wonder that I didn't break down and start wearing depends.

Sadly, Millie died of stomach cancer when he was seven.  He didn't get to live very long, but he made a huge impression.  He was a great little bird, and I miss him.