Lara

by Risa

My husband and I brought Lara home on February 22, 2002. She had just come from the breeder that morning. We had been looking at parakeets for a couple of months and when we saw her we knew she was "the one." She was the most beautiful bird I have ever seen and not just because she was ours. Her feathers were a periwinkle blue with a sheen of green on the chest, and they were peacock blue where her wing feathers crossed in back, and her head was bright yellow. She had the nicest chirp, not too raucous or loud, and she chirped every morning when we uncovered her cage until she saw that all of us were accounted for, including the two cats. We called it her "flock-summoning chirp."

She loved loud noises on TV, especially car crashes, gunshots, breaking glass, police sirens, and explosions. She'd make a kind of exclamation noise and get very excited. She also loved all kinds of music, from Eric Clapton to Bob Marley, and she especially liked a group called Massive Attack that does the theme music for the TV show House M.D. She would sing along whenever the show came on. When we turned on the dishwasher, my husband would say, here comes your friend, Lara! and she would sing along through the entire cycle. When we played music for her, she would do this up-and-down little dance we called the "Birdie Bop".

When the cat put his face to the cage, she would nibble on his whiskers--she LOVED cat whiskers!" She could mimic Sabrina Cat's meow so perfectly I had to look to see which one was talking, and she also mimicked the kitchen timer in perfect pitch. If I didn't shut off the timer right away, she would lean back on the perch and start beating her wings like she was trying to take off. We called it her "airplane."

Her favorite color was purple--given a choice of toys, or seed cups, she would choose the purple one every time. And she was VERY smart--there were three doors on the front of the cage and she knew which one opened for the seed dish. If we didn't notice that she had emptied it, she would lift that door with her beak and let it crash down, over and over. If that trick didn't work, she would lift the empty seed cup and let it crash to the floor--that always brought me running!

She was very affectionate; she would give "birdie kisses" through the bars of the cage and when she was held on a finger; and she would pull out hairs from my husband's mustache. We called them "Daddy's nesting material" because we figured she was instinctively trying to build nests although she never laid eggs.

She loved her little bathtub; she would take a bath and get herself all wet and then preen her feathers dry; she enjoyed her bath so much. When the weather was warm enough to open the windows and she could hear the birds outside, she would mimic them too and they would have conversations chirping back and forth.

When she got sick, in February, I kept telling her to hang on, that soon it would be spring and she could talk to the "outdoor birdies." She never recovered and died in March. I promised her I would never let anything hurt her, and I failed. I have taken some steps in the grieving process--I have planted flowers on her grave, yellow and purple pansies. Yellow for her feathers and purple for her favorite color. And I have ordered a memorial stone, which will be engraved with her name and dates and a graphic of a parakeet. It looks very tasteful in the picture on the website and is made of real river stone. She was so much more to us than "just a bird."

Risa

Thank you Risa for sharing your life with Lara. May healing come to you grown out of your love of this beautiful bird. - LoraKim