Posted 11/19/02. Reposted to this site 2/21/2005

I'm the only person I know who ever took in a stray parakeet. Or a stray Burmese Python, but that's another story. Walking to class one cold spring day in Madison, Wisconsin, I couldn't believe my eyes. There, pecking dispiritedly at the sidewalk, was a bright green parakeet! It didn't take any notice of me, and I approached it; but when I got almost close enough to touch it, it suddenly took to the air.

Poor little thing, I thought to myself, and went on to class. I kept a good eye out on my way back, and sure enough, the parakeet was in evidence, looking even less spiffy as the afternoon grew cooler, seeming to glow with its exotic plumage against the grey sidewalk and winter-bleached foliage. This time it just looked at me as if I were an agent of unrelenting fate, too cold and exhausted to flee my grasp.

I carried it back to the dorm in my cupped hands, its little body amazingly fragile and soft as a dream, flexing against my palms as its chest rose and fell with its breathing.

Capturing it meant a trip downtown, for birdseed and a cage. I left the poor little thing in my room and trudged off down State Street, paying much more than I wanted to for a cage for a free bird I wasn't supposed to have in my room. I remember that part distinctly, and how gratifying it was that Sneaky had perked up in the relative warmth of the room by the time I returned, and enjoyed his perches and his seed and water. I'm pretty sure I got him a mirror to keep him company, too. (Parakeets aren't too ight-bray when it comes to mirrors).

I distinctly remember that, afraid he'd be too uncomfortable in the baggage compartment, I smuggled him onto an airplane at some point. Try that nowadays! I got a cardboard bird-box from the pet store, brightly printed and perforated with breathing holes, and I put it in a shoulder bag and tucked it under the seat. I was on the verge on airsickness that flight, and the stewardess was very solicitous, and I felt even worse imagining she'd hear Sneaky scratching around in his carrying box.

Where I kept him when I got home is a mystery to me, unless I checked his cage with my luggage. It's odd the gaps memory leaves. I don't remember taking him back to Madison, either, but I must have, because I had him when I got back to Carbondale, and when I left home to move in with Jim.

I never worked with him enough (Sneaky, that is, not Jim!) to get him to sit on my finger, but it was pleasant hearing him mumbling brightly as he groomed himself, and I enjoyed watching him flutter around his cage. I'd bring him back stalks of plantain I gathered as I walked around town, and I bought him overpriced sprays of millet that he demolished with enthusiasm, and fixed cuttle bone to his cage for him to eat and polish his beak upon. As long as it was warm enough I'd hang his cage under the porch roof, and his squawks gave a semi-tropical luster to the old homestead, a ramshackle frame house with a porch whose rucked floor set right on the ground, that sat on a side street near campus. After we got married and moved to another place, they tore it down and put in an apartment house. But at the time there were daylilies around its tiny back steps, and a sizable redbud tree in the back yard whose heart-shaped leaves dappled our bedroom walls with light and shadow, and a tall oak out front shading us.

I mostly did the shopping on my bike, as this was long before I learned to drive, packing my orange backpack as full as humanly possible. One day, as I swooped onto the porch, the backpack clipped Sneaky's cage and knocked it to the ground. The door popped open and Sneaky darted upward, a raucous flash of green and yellow. We heard him in the oak tree the rest of the afternoon, but though we left the cage door open and seed in the cage, we never saw him again. I like to think he flew south; and if he didn't, when the weather turned cold that fall, I hope he caught the eye of another bird fancier, and not a cat.

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you like the background, you're welcome to copy it and use it.