Day 42 (to lock-down)
Exactly one year ago Nina came to us, probably after she got lost to her previous owners. Until a year ago I would not have imagined that I would ever be a mother of a bird. We adopted her (or she adopted us) and from being utterly ignorant in matters of birds we slowly began to get to know her and her needs. After a week of wandering around free in our house, following us to the shower and standing on our heads during lunch (not to mention the poop we would discover in all sorts of dark corners or just in the middle of the living room’s carpet) we were faced with a dilemma – buy her a cage or let her free by the window. It was a critical moment. We ended up reading all information we could find about Agapornis Personata (her kind), and were also told by other people that know, that the second option would be equal to death sentence for her. A bird born in captivity will not survive outside.
We bought her a cage as spacious as possible and gave up the mind-boggling ideology of letting her roam free at home. We released her to fly at home as much as we could. Slowly she got used to her new home (the cage) and began to return to it when she got tired of us and our bullying. Nina is a creature with character. She likes to make me coffee in the morning (and then also try to drink it) and take baths in the toilet sink (but just in moments she feels like). She wants to marry my dear husband but knows that pampering is with me. She has become a family member, she does not speak our language and we do not tweet her language (even though we practice) but we have developed ways of communicating and we really understand each other, it is quite amazing.
During the day, if there is a beautiful day outside, she likes to spend her time on the terrace. We hang her cage next to our little lemon tree and she whistles and swing, cracking kernels and seeds and talking to the neighbors’ birds.
In the last five days it has been raining non-stop. There was not a single moment of sunshine outside and the world became grayer than the permanent grayness of this quarantine. Nina (and we) were in double quarantine – no excursions to the terrace.
Here and there a surreal thought caught my eye – what would happen if this rain would never stop again? I tried to remember when was the last time, the last moment I enjoyed the sun on the porch, which I really cuddled up to, because maybe that was the last time? (I’ve been used to pondering the “last times” of all sorts of things since the quarantine began, I admit).
Anyway – the sun is back today. Admittedly intermittently, but my worries were dispelled. Everything is fine. Nina was released out of the double closure for a vacation on the porch, right to her permanent place next to the lemon tree and I was filled with joy to see her like that again, humming to herself, gossiping with the neighbors and cracking kernels.
