Fly Away
My cousins owned a bright blue parakeet named Lydia when I was growing up. They let Lydia fly around loose in the house. She liked to perch on the large mirror that hung on the wall in the living room. I remember seeing her white bird poop dripping down the front of the usually gleaming mirror and wanting to run from the house in horror.
My cousins liked to try to get Lydia to perch on their shoulders. Sometimes she’d perch on my oldest cousins head and peck at her hair. “Just hold your finger out and she’ll land on it,” they’d tell me as Lydia flew wildly around the living room.
I didn’t like Lydia. I tried to touch her head once and she bit me with her sharp curved beak. She was always flapping around over head, and that disturbed me.
Flapping and hopping are my two least favorite animal activities. Now that I think of it, I’m also not very fond of barking, biting, scratching or mauling someone to death either. Flapping is the thing that bothers me the most about birds. It’s good to watch them fly from a distance, but as soon as those flapping wings get too close to me I panic.
Lydia didn’t last very long. She got out one day. While I did feel sad when I heard, I was also a little relieved.
