Good bye, sweet friend

this photo was taken about 10 years ago

Nichi, whose name comes from a derivation of the word for the sun in Japanese, was gifted to me by a neighbor in the spring of 1987, for my 25th birthday. The neighbor bred cockatiels, and this was one of his rare white ones.

Nichi's been my companion for half my life, through different living situations, trials, tribulations, joys, and lots of changes.

I will miss him. It will take quite a bit of getting used to not having him around.

For the first several years of his life, he lived in my bedroom, and imprinted and bonded with me very strongly.

During those early years, he watched over me at night, and welcomed me home with great enthusiasm every day.

The welcoming home bit was a habit he maintained for all of his days, no matter where we lived, or who we were living with, if only ourselves.

Even at his weakest, these past few days, he would still offer up weak little peeps of welcome when I got home from work.

He was a one woman bird. He loved to sit on my head and preen my hair, or sit on my shoulder and make quiet little sounds into my ear. If I was lying on the couch reading, he'd want to be with me, and so on....

In recent years, he was having more and more difficulty getting through his bi-annual molts.

Molting causes a lot of stress to birds, especially as they get older.

This last one was a doozy. He'd shown signs of struggle with the first part (the losing of feathers), but then, he bounced back, and was his old sociable, loving self by the first weekend of October.

However, as he started to grow in the new feathers (the second phase of a molt), he did okay at first, but then started having an especially hard time, sort of all of a sudden.

One day last week, he just wasn't right....and he kept getting sicker and weaker. The special supplements didn't seem to help this time at all, and then he stopped eating and drinking, and spent most of his time sleeping.

By last Friday, I thought he was lost, but then, over this past weekend, he started eating and drinking again, and showing some signs of being a little perkier.

But then, yesterday, he slowed down again.

Match that up with the unfortunate coincidence or our first cold snap of the season and a non working furnace....and....well, tropical birds don't tolerate the cold very well, especially if they are old and under stress....and it was down to 60 degrees in here overnight.

I covered his cage with the usual blankets last night, but the wind was whipping so strong all night that it was just was too much for him. I found him when I got up today.

We buried him under the willow tree in the front yard, which he could see from his place in the living room.

I think, in some way, he will continue to watch over me as I sleep.