Flashback Friday: Waddles

Waddles was our pet cockatiel. He was mostly gray, with some white and yellow around his face along with the trademark orange cheeks. I'm not exactly sure when he came to be with us, but he was a gift from our cousin Lisa.
Waddles had a few talents. He could say "praise the Lord"-I'm sure my mom taught him that one, "charge" (for the San Diego Chargers??) and chirp incessantly at the first break of dawn and throughout the day; the latter was not what we considered a 'talent'. We would, however, show off his "sayings" to everyone who came to visit our house, but the chirping had to go.

It was always a fight between us kids as to whose room he was going to stay in, because we all knew we had to be prepared. Let me explain: Each morning as the chirping would wake you from your comfortable slumber, you would reach for anything available to "chuck" at the cage-this would get him to stop-for a moment. It would usually have to be followed up by several more items to get him to stop so you could go back to sleep (none of which brought any harm to the bird-I promise!) .
Now some of you are thinking-how cruel, that's abuse. But I'm telling you, this bird was the toughest, meanest bird that ever lived. He would only let a few of us change the paper in his cage and feed him. He would sometimes ride on our shoulder around the house, but watch out for those ears! Honestly, if he felt the need to escape his life with us, he had his chances.

One day Nicole, Rebekah and I saw Waddles out on the roof. We went running down the hall shouting to dad that Waddles escaped from his cage. However, when we got to Waddles cage he was still in there; apparently someone else had let their cockatiel go. The crazy thing is that we lived way out in the country-no neighbors close by-so we don't know where this other bird came from. After pleading with Dad to 'save' the other bird, he obliged, armed himself with a work glove and caught the other bird. We affably named him Wolfgang and put him in the cage with Waddles. They got along just fine, though I don't remember much else of Wolfgang.
One beautiful sunny morning, mom set the cage outside so the birds could get some fresh air. Our dog had other plans-no he didn't eat the brids-don't worry. He knocked the cage over though and Woldfgang flew away, Waddles, of course, stayed. We couldn't get rid of him if we tried. The chirping day and night drove us all insane!
Even after I married and moved away, whenver I would call home I could hear that bird in the background-chirping away. I could hear my younger brothers telling him to "shut-up", I'm sure they were saying it nicely. It wasn't that my family didn't love animals, we were just more dog people than bird people.
We figured he would outlive us all, he had to have been about 26 or 27 when he passed, my sister Nicole called me, crying, to let me know. After all those years of trying to get hime quiet and complaining about him, we all ended up shedding a few tears over him leaving us (ok, maybe not my brothers). In a house with seven kids, numerous dogs and a stray cat, I give the bird credit, he had to be tough as nails to survive it.
Waddles, we miss you buddy.
The moral of this flashback: Choose your household pets wisely, don't just accept any pet-even it's from family.