Backstory no. 3

Orson and Alfie and Pearl

Orson and Alfie and Pearl

I posted this photo to a few social media sites; people seemed to like it, and then they had some questions. Those people with the questions probably don’t read my substack (or even know I have one) so they’ll never see this and will have to keep wondering what the deal is. Only you will know what the deal is. This is the deal:

I like birds. My son LOVES birds. He is autistic and birds are one of his special interests.

I’d never for a second considered having a bird as a pet. Birds have the gift of flight, and that is magic, and because of this magic, I never felt like they belonged in my apartment. So the question now is: How did I end up with these two birds in my apartment?

It would seem simple. I don’t want a bird, but my kid loves birds and really wants one, so eventually, I give in and get a bird. Isn’t that how everyone ends up with a dog? Well, that’s not what happened with us.

Years ago I was sitting in our living room and heard a chirping noise. I began to wander around our apartment looking for the source. Eventually, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a small blue parakeet chirping and bouncing around looking for a way into our apartment. I opened the window, and the bird flew right in. It was a cold January night and a snowstorm was coming so we decided we couldn’t send this little tropical bird back out into the New York winter. We made a cage out of a box and a wire basket and the bird spent the night. The next day I began the process of finding the owner of what we had now learned was a budgerigar (budgie). I signed up for a Facebook group for lost NYC birds and put up signs all over our neighborhood.

I received some voicemails and Facebook messages letting us know that people were happy to take the bird from us if we never found the owners. After a day I bought a small cage and some birdseed, still fully planning on giving the bird away. About a week in we began talking about how we may not find the owners, so we should instead try to find a new home for the bird that we were now calling Lucky Bird. I should have known when we named it that it wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually, my son asked why we were looking for a new home for Lucky Bird when she had clearly already found one.

So that is how we ended up with a pet bird. After the Covid lockdown ended, I told my kids we could get Lucky a friend as a reward for how well they handled the return to school. That is how we ended up with two.

Sadly a few months ago, Lucky died. We had her for about 7 years, and have no idea how old she was when we got her, but the avian vet estimated her age as “real old”. We decided Alfie (the post-Covid addition) should not be alone, so we got Pearl.

Now to the photo. The question I got the most was: Is he really asleep!? the answer is no, but it’s not impossible that he would be. He loves taking the birds back to his room, and when he does they often sit and climb all over him. He was lying in the bed with the birds on his head, I grabbed my camera, and in one of the frames he closed his eyes. I liked that one the best. I wish I was not quite so tight in the frame, to let it breathe a little, but I think I was cropping out some messy bedding I didn’t want to see, and I was afraid if I moved it the birds would fly off. Other than the obvious absurdity of having birds on his head, I really think it’s the colors that make this interesting. There is very little color in the photo beyond the birds, and their color is wild. I sometimes look at them and think about how punched up their colors seem, like somebody went a little overboard with the vibrancy.

A small nitpick with the photo: I wish that both birds were sharp, but the light was so low, I should be glad anything is sharp.

Another question I got more than once (exactly twice) was “Do they poop on him or in his bed” The answer to that is: Sometimes.

OK, If you have any questions about this photo, feel free to ask. Anytime I photograph my family I have a difficult time seeing them objectively but I found this one pretty irresistible.

Travis

While writing this I was listening to: