Bye Bye Birdie

Here's how the story goes. About 6 years ago I decided to get Nate a bird for Christmas because I knew he loved animals and wanted a pet. I decided a bird was a good way to go--low maintenance and not too much trouble to take care of. So we got a parakeet. It got lonely so I got a second parakeet a short time later to keep it company. Then the first parakeet died a month or two after the second one came. Then I found out that parakeets usually live for about 12 years! I was thinking that they might live for 2 or 3 years at most. I had no idea that they are a long term investment.

So here we are six years later, and we still have a parakeet, in quite good health, I might add. It's been a while now that I have been very sick of the thing. It makes a mess with its seeds, bangs its food dish all the time, and wakes up my napping kids on occasion. (there's not much else that makes me more mad than something waking up my kids during naptime.) Plus, due to business/forgetfulness, the cage never gets cleaned out. Well, I guess it gets cleaned out about 4 times a year. Seriously.

I decided it was time to get rid of the bird and Nate finally agreed. As luck would have it, someone in our ward has a parakeet and wanted another one to keep theirs company. So we found a good home for our bird. Unfortunately, we didn't factor in our tender hearted 4 year old. We have been telling her for a while that we were going to give the bird away, which she of course didn't want to do. But today ended up being the day that we said goodbye to our bird.

Here is a picture of Natalie with the bird, at its new house.
Here is poor Natalie crying uncontrollably after leaving the bird there. She was so sad. We tried to explain that the bird was lonely and needed a friend so we took it to live with another bird. Her solution was that we could find another bird to live with ours. She kept crying "I need a pet. I need a bird." Later when she calmed down I told her that we needed to get rid of the bird because we are going to have a baby and we don't want the bird to wake up our baby. I asked her, "do you want a pet, or a baby at our house?" Of course, in the moment she said the wanted a pet. She later changed her answer to "both."

She was so sad that we decided to take her out for a special treat at "Old McDonalds" to help her feel a little better. You can see that the tears are gone. We are sure the sadness will be short lived. None of us ever paid any attention to the bird anyway, except in my case when yelling at it to be quiet.