friday 1 april 2011
A footbiter, she was. Not that all lovebirds aren’t footbiters. But in her family, Tari was the one who seemed to get the most pleasure and satisfaction out of wrapping her beak around the limb of another bird and pressing firmly. Though I didn’t witness the act, I’ve always suspected her to be the culprit in the biting-nearly-off of the leg of Antoinette, zebra finch, in September 1992. This bite resulted in a vet trip next day and the surgical removal of Antoinetti’s leg. Tari had no reservations whatsoever about the size of the bird to which the tasty leg was attached. She would bite the leg of a teeny one-ounce zebra finch, and she’d also with great delight bite the leg of the Senegal parrot who was about four times her size. All sizes in between were equally tempting.
These incidents took place always at playtimes. Certain birds would be released for playtimes on certain days. And any bird who had the audacity to land on top of Tari’s cage would get the bite if they didn’t leave fast enough. It amazes me that any of them kept landing on her cage at all after they’d been bitten once, but they did.
Tari was a Christmas baby, hatched 24th December 1991. She and her sisters were the only Christmas babies I ever had in 55 years of animals. She spent her five-and-a-half-year life mostly sharing a cage with her sister Tiki, and was the dominant one of the pair. Now and then she would get a little too dominant with Tiki, and I’d separate them for a few weeks until Tari simmered down.
She was spirited and funny, talkative and special.
Her sudden death on Friday4 April 1997 remains a mystery to me. It was late morning of a sunny day, and I had just fed her. Then I left the room for a few minutes, heard a birdie scream, ran back into the room to find her dead in the bottom of her cage. She had given no signs of illness whatsoever. She and Tiki were having one of their separations at the time, so there was no one else in her cage. To make things even stranger, Tiki would die exactly the same way three years later. I would feed her, leave the room, hear her scream, and run back to find a dead bird on the cage floor. No warnings, no signs of illness, everything appearing to be completely normal.
How I remember them with intense affection, with amusement, with gratitude for everything that they were and for every minute I had with them.
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part of the book All My Stars
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