One day Lucille discovered a dead male zebra finch. "Oh, it's Mike," she thought. Mike's been hobbling around on stumps because he keeps mutilating his toes right off! We have no idea why or how to stop him.
But then Lucille noticed the bird in her hand had both feet. It was Fizzy's mate Ike, Mike's brother. Ike had been with Fizzy for exactly five years, ever since he was two months old. He hadn't seemed sick at all.
Fizzy and Ike liked to live in a plastic canvas nesting house on an upper shelf of the passthrough window that Lucille has screened off to keep the birds out of the kitchen. After Ike died, Fizzy refused to go into it or any other nesting house. She slept on the yarn rope along the ceiling.
Lucille got a total shock the day after Ike died. She was cleaning cages and the drawer wouldn't pull out of a cage. Something was in the way. It was Karen, dead on the floor despite being one of the youngest birds in Lucille's flock. She most definitely didn't seem sick at all.
These sudden deaths with no explanation are quite unsettling. Lucille was almost afraid to go into the birdroom the next day, but it's been weeks now and everyone's fine.
Al has been alone ever since his mate Pearl died. He saw Fizzy free and thought he'd mate up with her. Tough luck, Al. Fizzy said no. Karen's former mate Joe was more her style--never mind that he was nine months old to her five plus years.
She began flirting with Joe, playing with him on the upper shelf of the passthrough. Lucille had hung a lace valance across the top shelf and there were two tiny spaces where the valance curved upward just enough to let a couple birds sneak in and play on the shelf.
He would go in with a piece of yarn in his mouth like he would build her a nest. She encouraged and admired him by flying up from the middle shelf to hover outside the valance where she could see him, then fly back down. Up and down, up and down. Then she followed him inside and they chatted about what a nice place that would be to live.
Lucille had to put a nesting house back up there for them to play in. Instead of sleeping there, they moved into a tiny wooden house on the wall right next door. Fizzy's the oldest bird of all our birds, the very first one Lucille bought. She's acting like a teenager with her young fellow. It makes us smile.
