Fly Free, Chicky Boo

Meet Faye. He’s a Rainbow Lorikett who came to join our family just a few weeks ago. My daughter named him after a group Faeries, which are a type of supernatural creature in the HBO, television series, True Blood. There, the name is spelt ‘fae’; ours is with a ‘y’. I think we were trying to make it unisex because our girls usually end being boys or vice versa. First, we had Romeo, the cockatiel, who ended up laying eggs, extending our family even further! A few months ago, the wind picked up our birdcage, throwing it across the yard. The roof came off and all seven hand-reared birds flew away. A least they were together? It took a while to get over that one. So much has changed for me this year, and it’s taken a while to settle into this different lifestyle. It can get lonely when living in social isolation. When my classes finished this year, apart from exercising, I didn’t know what to do with myself: enter Faye.

Apparently, Faye couldn’t fly–yet. But as soon as we took him outside, he saw a flock of birds like him, and flew off to be with them. It’s a strange feeling watching $180 fly off up into a tree. Knowing that the bird wanted to be free (even though we can tell ourselves otherwise), made it okay. We rang our local wildlife and snake catcher and he said: “Rainbow Lorikeets are not like other wild birds. They will take in other birds into their flocks. Especially if they can already feed themselves. They will copy the other birds and learn to survive.”

And this is the tribute we created, in memorial:

In the mornings we can still hear it, squealing it’s excited whistle. It may not be our Faye but we are reminded of how nature takes care of its own.

(Wait, there is a happy ending…)