Sometime around 5 I pulled myself out of bed to prepare for the coop monthly board meeting and to feed the animals. The problem was I forgot to water and feed the birds. I got home from my meeting after 10 exhausted and went right back to bed. Being the terrible parent I am, I again forgot to feed my birds or turn on their heating lamp. I did watch the recording of "Dancing with the Stars" and "Bletchley Park." During "Bletchley Park" I kept hearing birds singing when people were inside. I have this new Bose sound system and I thought, "Wow, this is really good. They captured bird sounds from the grounds." Now I know it was the death song of my poor Zooey. All I had to do was get up off that bed and go look and I might have saved him.
This morning when I did finally get out of the bed and walk across those few feet to the desperate fluttering of Franny, I found a dry water dish, no food, no warming light and Zooey curled up on his side on the bottom of the cage in a nest of grass. He was still warm when I picked him up. His eyes were opaque and his beak tightly shut so even as I tried to give him water and stoke him back to life he was too far gone to receive help.
I had filled the water and seed cups before trying to revive Zooey so all the time I was working on him, Franny was devouring food and drinking silently. In fact, even now, hours later, she has not made a sound. She just sits there looking at me accusingly. I can't stand it. She is sitting up there under his body in its shroud rocking back and forth wondering what to do. I am going to have to find her a mate to help her....
It is now hours later and I have found a bronze wing mannikin song site and played them for her. She really responded to two of them. I am now going to try to link to the two she liked.
http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Lonchura-cucullata?&view=3
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She responded to the first with answers and movement and the second by going down and drinking and eating. Maybe if I can't find her another mate I can play the songs to remind her to eat and drink. Franny has never been the smartest bulb in the chandelier. It once took us 8 hours to get her back in the cage because she couldn't figure how to fly back in even though Zooey was coaching her the whole time.
What is a Bronze Winged Mannikin (Lonchura cucullata) you might ask? It is a small finch found in the middle to the southern African continent. I bought them because they were the cheapest birds at Petsmart. It seems as though they are now very rare and extremely difficult to breed in captivity. Today after much research, I have found only a handful of breeders in the US. No chain pet stores carry them as far as I can tell. So much for finding Franny a companion. They look like this:
The little blackish spot at the top of the wing looks iridescent green in real life, hence the name Bronze Winged Mannikin. The body color looks more grey than brown as well. On my computer screen, the picture is nearly life sized at 3 1/2 inches. They are tiny, tiny birds. I have called all over asking about them and no one has any. It is like they wee the flavor of the month and then they disappeared. What am I to do with my little solitary Franny? Let her die of a broken heart?
So I have continued to search as I have been writing this piece in hopes I would have a happy ending but life isn't like that is it? Life is life and some days are just dark and dreary and never get any better. The management never got back to me about what to do with his remains so I think we will bury him in the big flower pot with the hibiscus in the corner of the patio. He will go back to nature soon enough and nothing will be able to get up here to dig him up. I can't leave him on top of the cage much longer and I don't want to put him in the fridge. I am just so sad because I know this is just the first of so many losses that are so sure to quickly come. Moonbeam is not well. Parents of us all are precarious. Friends, lovers,and even ourselves are at that precipice of death. Death happens in the blink of an eye when the choice to roll over or get up could make all the difference in the world.
