The nest overfloweth

As I stood in the Culver City Petsmart, wanting to take home Buddy the green-cheeked conure, I tried to understand my own logic. He was certainly pretty, a small green parrot with a long red tail, a yellow and red chest, and hints of blue flight feathers on the underside of his wings. And he was social, bending the top of his head forward for me to pet him. I remembered how little I’d liked my husband’s birds, when he’d had them. At first I thought they were cute, his sweet little cockatiels. But I didn’t know how to relate to them at all. They screeched, attacking the mirror in their cage (that was supposed to be some sort of comfort) like it was an intruder, and were the opposite of soothing pets. They really were my husband’s birds, not mine, and I didn’t have much to do with them. I grew up on a farm, where the pets were mouse- and rat-killing outdoor cats. Birds to me were neither cuddly nor “relatable” — looking at them gave me no clue what they might be feeling. They just squawked and stared with that ancient, beady-eyed dinosaur stare of theirs. When they met an untimely end (through the neglect of a relative), we were very sad. But neither of us felt that birds were what our young couple/grad student/professional life was missing. So we moved on to the dog portion of our life, the clichéd run-up to having children.

My family and I left the pet store. My husband kept asking me, in the store and on the way home, if I really had liked the bird. Yes, strangely enough, I had. When we arrived home, he disappeared into the study. The kids made a fuss over their hamsters, and I helped them put the pointless little litter boxes and igloos into the cages. We called a few family members to wish them a happy Easter. But my husband stayed in his office, working intently on what I imagined was prep for the big work week ahead. An hour or so after I’d first developed a crush on the conure, he announced that he’d found a conure and a cage on Craig’s List. Both were local, and we could probably look at them sometime during the following week.

Was I really serious about wanting the bird? he asked.

Um, yes. You’ll help too, won’t you? I mean, I’m not asking to be a zookeeper here, I answered.

Undaunted by my less-than-enthusiastic response, he called the numbers listed for the bird and the cage. Turns out that the bird was in desperate need of a new home. She was six months old. After owning her for a month, her family could no longer take care of her. There had been a sudden divorce, lots of instability, and the parent was jeopardizing his job by taking the baby bird to work every day. And the family lived five minutes away and would be happy to bring her over to meet us. Shortly afterwards, we were meeting a teenage girl, her somber father, and their beautiful conure, Ruby. She was a lot like Buddy, only the red feathers on her chest formed what looked like a heart. Her velour texture and technicolor palette made her look like a slightly nervous motif from of a velvet Jesus tapestry, a funny little avian Madonna. Sensing that something was amiss, she was hesitant to step onto my hand or my husband’s.

We spend a few minutes showing the girl and her father where we would put the cage, introducing them to our kids. I could tell that it hurt them to give her away. We made small talk, and they admired the hamsters and the bright-colored cages that looked like tiny Ikea stores. We told them that we’d think about Ruby and call them in a few hours. My husband mentioned the cage, located somewhere in Venice at a bird breeder’s house. The family offered to pick up the cage for us if we decided to take Ruby. Maybe if it worked out, we said, we could take her on Wednesday or something? The man looked worried, probably thinking we’d back out or come to our senses. He said that it would be hard for him to keep taking her to work with him. His daughter continued to pet Ruby, and we could tell that neither of them wanted to let her go. But again, we would not, could not, impulse-buy a pet that could live until we were senior citizens.

We said goodbye to Ruby and her people. And then my husband and I launched into a super-charged debate over whether this was insane, getting a new bird, two new hamsters, and eight new fish, in one weekend? I say it was a “debate” because it was no argument. In a usual scene from our marriage, I would be arguing for something extreme like this — only it would be an object, like the famous touch-screen sewing machine (cost = the GDP of Luxembourg) — and he would be arguing against it, trying to persuade me that I ought to at least sleep on it. This time we both looked like something straight out of the DSM-IV (see hypothetical diagnosis of “joint manic episode”). We were whipping ourselves up into a frenzy, barely paying attention to our kids, who had wandered off to play with Legos. In the end, a scant half hour after Ruby’s family had left, my husband called to say that yes, we would very much like her.

Ruby’s family returned to our house around dinner time, cage and bird in hand. They also brought her blue blanket and showed us how to tuck her in at night. Apparently she had been “blanket trained.” So instead of covering her cage at night, she wanted to be tucked into a blue fleece thing that resembled an infant’s sleep sack. She would let herself out in the morning. This was something I could relate to, a bird that had a fuzzy nest and a bedtime routine.

We’ve now had Ruby for about a month. At first we were going to change her name to something like Corazon, because she had the red heart on her chest and is a South American bird. But Ruby stuck, partly because my kids enjoy calling her Boobie. Every morning is like feeding time at the zoo, as we race around to make children’s breakfasts and lunches and feed the dog, hamsters, and bird. Ruby has figured out (mostly) not to bite the hand that feeds her millet, cashews, lettuce, and fruit. But she’s still stand-offish with new people. If you rush up to her and try to grab her, she bites, particularly if you’re never one of the people who comes bearing a cashew or strawberry. Even though she’s still a baby bird, I can tell that she’s kind of a Bitch. And I like that about her.