Vigil

While I write this, one of my daughter's two parakeets is sitting on the bottom of the cage, breathing in a way that is just wrong for a bird. I've got the cage in a warm, darkened, quiet room, and at this point, we simply need to wait and see if he's going to make it through the night.

At first, he'd been in his food dish, and R had thought maybe he was really a she (since we've never been too sure about this with either parakeet) and maybe she was laying eggs, at which point the girls did a great gleeful happy dance all over the livingroom, squealing and crying, "Babies! Babies!"

After I'd taken one look at him, though, I'd warned the kids that the bird might not be nesting. S/he might, I said, be very sick. (I mean, this parakeet looked for all the world like Job after he turned his face to the wall. And I'm sure the squeals of joy a few minutes before hadn't helped.)

With my diagnosis, the girls were so distraught that they could hardly think. I made them get into their pj's and the five-year old said, "Mommy, but what if Lime dies tonight?. We'll have to dig a hole and put him in a graveyard. Why are you so happy?"

"I'm not happy," I said, "I'm very worried too."

"Then why are you talking in a loud voice?" she asked.

So I lowered my voice to an anxious whisper to match theirs and said, "I'm sorry. I hope Lime doesn't die. But you still have to get into your jammies."

I'm that kind of mom.

R asked to call a friend and ended up leaving a very rambling, distraught message on their machine before I realized she wasn't actually talking to anyone.

Later, S said, "It's just that I love Lime and I'm very feeling very protecting of him. Because he's such a little animal."

And R added, "And I feel the worst out of everyone, because I practically raised him from an egg, and I'm his mama."

We talked a little about how hard it is that birds don't show they're sick until they're very sick. I called around and spoke to a few vet answering services, and finally consulted with an emergency vet clinic in Berkeley. The doctor there passed along the message that there's not much more we can do than what we're doing. It doesn't seem to be a female bird with egg binding (a stuck egg, which of course can kill her), but I'd only done a superficial exam, and I didn't want to disturb Lime any more than necessary anyway.

I can hear the girls in the other room now, working at the kitchen table: S is drawing pictures, R is finishing a book report on poster board. There's also the sound of suckling baby polar bears, which would be very unnerving if I didn't know what it was.

The girls sound cheerful again, but the last I'd checked, R had started to draw a tombstone on a piece of paper. It had writing on it: "Lime P----, a good bird who was nice, 2001-2005."

"Honey!" I'd said, "He's not dead yet. Don't do that."

"I know," she'd answered, "but this is handy, just in case...you know."

What a strange combination of drama and practicality she is.

Hmm.