Jessie's Story
I am the ghost of Jessie. When I was alive I was a grey and black budgie and I was rather fat. Now however I am transparent as most ghosts are, and I'm sure I've lost weight because flying doesn't make me as puffed out as it used to. I died when I was seven though I might have lived much longer had I not tried to lay an egg. Middle aged budgies with middle age spread who try to lay eggs are asking for trouble, but how was I to know? Anyway I'll tell you about that presently.
Before I lived in the aviary I lived in another house in a little brass bell-shaped cage on a windowsill. In my cage there was one perch, and three little brass bowls, one for seed, one for grit and one for water. The windowsill where I spent my days overlooked the front garden. I saw people come and go, the children and their daddy going out in the mornings, the postman, the newspaper boy, the children and their daddy coming home in the evenings. Sometimes a rather stout lady would come to the house to clean when everyone else was out. She didn't bother me much except when she lifted up my cage to dust the windowsill, which made me rather nervous. I slept and ate my way through the days. I put on weight and became a rather roly-poly sort of budgie.
One day a new lady came to work for my daddy. She worked outside in the garden, once a week. She did all sorts of jobs, clipping the hedge, mowing the lawn, pulling out weeds from the borders and so forth. Sometimes she worked right under my windowsill. Now and again she would stop her work, straighten her back and look up at me: "Hello Jessie, how are you today?" "Bored," I said. "I've got a lovely aviary in my garden," she said, "with lots of budgies in it. I wish you could come and live with us." "I wish I could too. But I'm not your budgie. I'm supposed to live here." The conversation always followed this pattern. Then one day this gardener came on a different day from usual, and it happened to be the same day that the stout cleaning lady came. The stout cleaning lady invited the gardening lady in for a tea-break. "That's very kind of you," said the latter, "I'm absolutely parched."
This event in itself was unremarkable, but with hindsight it marked a major turning point in my life. I was dozing on my perch - I could hear the sound of spoons stirring in cups and biscuit packets crackling, interspersed with the odd peal of laughter, when suddenly I caught the name 'Jessie', and I was immediately wide awake. Why were they talking about me? I pressed my ear up to the bars of my cage, straining to hear what they were saying. "I don't know, you'd better ask their dad…….depends on the children……..don't seem that interested……" Then somebody turned a tap on and I missed the rest of this vital conversation.
The lady gardener finished her tea and went back into the front garden, to continue her pruning. She looked up at me and winked: "We've been talking about you," she smiled. "Oh really?" I said, filing my beak on a piece of cuttlefish, "I bet that was riveting". "It was, actually. We've been hatching a plot to get you out of here." My heart leapt. "What did you say?" "We are going to try to arrange for you to live with my budgies. In my aviary," she said, "where you can fly about to your heart's content." I was so happy, I even did a little twirl on my perch, when suddenly a black thought burst uncontrollably into my head and my heart began to sink back down again: "But what if you fail?" "I won't fail," said the gardening lady. "How do you know that?" I asked cynically. "A gut feeling," she replied. "Just trust me, Jessie." She bent down to pull out a weed. "That's all I can do," I said, rather miserably. "So what's your plan?" I asked. "First of all," she smiled, "I have to write a letter……"
The next day, although it wasn't a gardening day, I saw the gardening lady coming up the front path with a large white envelope in her hand. She looked up at me through the window and said: "This is it, Jessie. Keep your toes crossed," and she put the envelope through our letter box.
That evening the children's daddy sat down in an armchair and tore open the white envelope. He began to read the letter. Sometimes he looked up at me, sometimes he raised his eyebrows, and once or twice he scratched his head. I felt sick. I couldn't work out what he was thinking. He went into the kitchen and made something to eat for the children. They all sat down at the table together, and above the clatter of knives and forks I thought I heard my name mentioned once or twice, though I couldn't be sure. I myself was completely off my food. Then daddy came back to sit in his armchair and the smallest child climbed up onto his lap. The little boy was looking at me, which made me nervous. "Will I be able to see Jessie's new home?" he asked. "Of course you will," said his daddy. "The gardener won't mind." And with that the little boy seemed happy. He climbed down and ran out into the garden where his brothers and sisters were laughing.
Daddy picked up the phone, and this time he definitely mentioned my name. Now my heart was doing somersaults. Was I really going to move? What was an aviary? Would the other budgies like me? I couldn't sleep that night - I tossed and turned on my perch until I saw the sun rising over the rooftops opposite my window. I must have dozed off for a couple of hours, then I was awoken mid-morning by the sound of the doorbell. The stout cleaning lady opened the door and the gardening lady came into our house, only this time she wasn't wearing boots or gardening gloves. They came over to me on my windowsill, beaming. "You're going to a new home today, Jessie," said the cleaning lady. The gardening lady picked me up in my cage and whistled to me. "The other budgies are looking forward to meeting you," she said, and took me out to her car. "Goodbye Jessie, we'll come and visit you," said the cleaning lady, wiping her eye with a stout hand.
When we arrived at the gardening lady's house, she showed me a gigantic wooden cage in one of the upstairs rooms: "This is a mini aviary," she said. "You can stay in here for a few days, just till you get used to living in a bigger space. She helped me to get out of my little brass cage. You might have thought I'd have jumped out of it in a flash but I couldn't, my legs had turned to jelly and my feet seemed to have welded themselves to my perch. When I eventually did manage to get out of there I was promptly sick. The gardening lady, whom all the other birds call Kaz, was very sympathetic. "Take it easy Jessie. You were in that cage for a long time, that's why you feel so nervous. You'll soon feel better."
I had a long, long sleep that night, and already by the following morning I had begun to feel better. It felt very odd, having so much space, and so many perches to choose from. It took a bit of getting used to, I can tell you. The sound of other birds' voices, not very far away, drifted up from the garden through the open window, and amongst those voices I could make out the busy chatter of a group of budgies having a meeting: "A word in your shell-like ..... a little bird told me ..... there's a new girl in there……" (Squawks of amazement)....."Have you seen …….?" "Wonder what she's…….." "When will she……." "Where...how...why...?" I began to daydream, wondering if it could really be me they were talking about or some other far more important, far more impressive guest.
The warm summer days rolled slowly by. Kaz visited me several times a day, bringing me all sorts of delicacies to try. Then one morning she said: "Jessie, would you like to meet the other budgies today?" I immediately felt as sick as a parrot, and must have looked it too, because Kaz said, "You don't have to yet if you don't want to." I had a little think. "If I don't like it can I come back in here?" I asked. "Of course you can," said Kaz. So I agreed to meet the other budgies.
Kaz took me down to the aviary in the taxi, which is actually a hamster cage, and she went into the aviary with me. I was astonished. I had thought that 'aviary' meant a big cage, but this was a thousand times bigger than my little brass cage. There were cockatiels in there as well as budgies. Kaz let me out of the taxi near to the budgie shelter. I hopped onto one of the perches, and the other budgies gathered round me. "Are you the new girl?" asked a green one. "Is your name Jessie?" queried a yellow one. "Did you used to live on a windowsill?" piped up a white one. "Weren't you lonely?" asked a little blue budgie sweetly: "You won't be lonely any more." I looked at him. What a kind thing to say. I felt quite choked with emotion. That was the first time I saw Jim. Then a rather corpulent green and yellow budgie tapped me on the shoulder with her beak: "My name's Ezmeralda. Come on, I'll show you where the millet is," and she flew off, beckoning me with her wing. I went after her, though I had to stop on a few perches on the way. My wings were out of practice.
When Kaz came out with a bowl of fresh water for us that evening she came up to me and said: "Well Jessie, do you want to go back inside now?" "No thanks," I replied, "I think I'd rather stay here." Kaz was very pleased at this: "You've really come out of your shell, Jessie", she smiled warmly.
In fact I never did go back indoors, not until the end that is. The long summer days turned into autumn and then came the icy winter, but I was quite a portly budgie so I never felt the cold. Jim was always by my side, always my faithful friend. We had such laughs together. Spring came again and once again we enjoyed the warm sunshine.
Months turned into years, and though we were growing older we were still very sprightly. Then one spring day I suddenly felt unwell. I couldn't fly properly and I couldn't sit on my perch. I went into the budgie shelter to rest on the floor. Jim brought me food but I couldn't eat much. He was very worried. "If this goes on we'll have to call the vet," he said. The pain was increasing. "I think it's an egg," I said. "I haven't laid any since I was young. But something's wrong - I can't seem to lay this one properly."
Jim became frantic. He showed Kaz where I was and Kaz brought us both indoors. She phoned the vet. Keep her warm. Try warm water, try olive oil, don't allow the egg to break. Kaz gave me a shallow bath of warm water and that did relieve the pain a bit, but though I pushed as hard as I could the egg would not move. She phoned the vet again and made an appointment for the morning. The next morning before the appointment she gave me another warm bath again but I was too weak even to push by then. Kaz lifted me out gently to take me back to Jim, but I suddenly gave a loud scream and died in her hands. At that moment the pain left me and I felt myself floating, floating, up into a warm blue cloudless sky, and as I looked far down below I could see Jim beside my body, trying to wake me up, and Kaz crying with both her hands over her face, and I called to them, "I'm not dead, I'm alive, I'm up here flying in the sky and I'm not in pain any more." But they couldn't hear me. Kaz put Jim back into the aviary, but he couldn't understand, and he kept calling me and calling me so that in the end she had to take my body out there to show him again what he had refused to see. I couldn't bear to see him so upset. I flew down next to him and whispered into his ear: "I'm still with you Jimmy, don't cry. We'll always be together. Look at me, you can still see me if you try." And then he turned and looked straight into my eyes and gave a loud tweet of joy.
Dear little Jim has also finished his life on earth now, in fact he didn't stay very long after I had left. We are still always together, just as we were when we lived in the aviary. In fact we often pop in there to say hello to our old friends and to nibble a bit of millet or sweetcorn or whatever else happens to be on the menu. There's no point in going far away from here. This is the place where we are happy.