Losing Bodie

Things have been a little weird for me but on the morning of Saturday, February 27th, everything couldn't have been more normal until everything changed.

I had my newspaper and my coffee and I had rolled Bodie the budgie's cage outdoors and put Tookie the conure in his outdoor cage and I was just sitting down to enjoy the morning sun with them and the cats and dog and pigeons when I realized I'd forgotten to give Bodie her breakfast.

Bodie is a flighted budgie and I'm a bird rescuer with more than a little experience and exposure to the risks of losing a pet bird and I know better than to change out a bird's food dish when their cage is outdoors but I couldn't sit down to drink my coffee until Bodie had her breakfast and I didn't want to roll her cage back indoors and so I opened up the cage door and stuck my arm in and put her dish of breakfast inside. As I was doing so, she jumped onto my arm and walked up and out of her cage. There was a moment when we looked at each other, eye to eye, with her standing on my shoulder and both of us realizing that she was OUT. I tried to nonchalantly finesse her back down my arm and into the safety of her cage (scream-thinking NO NO NO NO! in my head) and then she flew off.

I saw her land in a neighbor's backyard and grabbed a net and went running to their house. I frantically rang their bell and, when they answered, could barely babble out that my bird was loose in their backyard and I needed access now.

Somehow they understood and took me through the house to their yard and there she was sitting on a lawn chair- the prettiest sight I'd seen in a long time. Bodie's tame with me and, if I had just walked up and offered her my arm, she probably would have hopped on but I started to raise the net and she saw it and flew off and I've not seen her since. That was almost two weeks ago.

I am heartsick. It is hard for me to even explain how badly I feel, how much this hurts. Bodie is out there, if she is still alive, hungry and scared and lost and it is all my fault. And I know better. Her safety and well-being is my responsibility and I let her down. Losing a pet has always been my greatest fear- the open endedness, not knowing. For me, this is much worse that the death of a pet- it is a raw wound that has no way to heal.



Since losing Bodie, I've put up and handed out more than 800 flyers in my neighborhood. I was feeling pretty crazy after I'd done 600 but a friend of mine told me she put up 1100 when she lost her beloved parrot.

I've climbed the fences and prowled the backyards, one to the next, of many of my neighbors.

I've put flyers up in plastic protectors, careful to staple them with the opening facing downward so that they won't just fill with rain and drown my flyers.

I've blasted budgie sounds out of the window of my home from dawn to dusk for a week and I blast budgie sounds from my car stereo when I slowly drive through the neighborhoods in ever-widening circles and I play budgie sounds from my cell phone while I walk the streets and put up flyers and talk to my neighbors.

I've posted to craigslist and 911ParrotAlert and Facebook and sent out e-mails to everybody I know begging them to send out my e-mail to everybody they know in San Francisco.

I walked in the rain, at dawn, at dusk, all day and late at night. I've lost a lot of sleep. I dreamt I found a feather of hers but I didn't. I dreamt I found her but I haven't.

I've put out piles of bird seed and stalks of millet. Bodie's cage is right where she left it on the back porch- door open and food dishes full.

My phone number is on damn near every telephone poll in the Bayview. But it is a big, big world and Bodie, my budgie girl, is just a little bird...




People have been very nice. Friends and fellow Mickaboo volunteers and bird rescuers have helped to try and find her. (Thank you.)

My neighbors- for many blocks in all directions- have been very kind. Most of the flyers have stayed up though there is one corner at Jamestown and Third where I've put them up three times and they've been torn down three times. And here and there, I'll find one torn down from a telephone poll and it hurts my heart each time.

And then there are those times when I see one of my flyers taped up by a neighbor to their car window or the front of their house...



I both like my neighborhood more and less now. More because people are nicer than I'd have thought and there are more backyard bird feeders than I knew and because there are lots of little green patches and birds living throughout. Less because it is where I lost Bodie, where I can't find Bodie.



There have been rain storms and big winds and normally I would LOVE them but now they make me hurt. I love the ravens that live all over my neighborhood but now I wince when I hear them. And the street-sweeper scares me. These days, everything I see or hear is measured against whether it would help or hurt Bodie.

The two times I've left the area since this happened, I find myself still looking for Bodie though I KNOW she's not in Walnut Creek or Fairfield or Oakley.

I don't know how I'm going to stop looking for her, whether I'll ever be able to walk anywhere around here ever again without a bag full of flyers, binocs, bird seed and a staple gun. And budgie sounds playing on my phone.

Bodie came into my life as a Mickaboo foster bird. I was at work in Emeryville in October 2007 when a Mickaboo e-mail came out saying that a budgie with a really bad case of face mites needed to be picked up from a surrenderer out in Danville. The surrenderer had saved Bodie from her owner who had decided that she no longer wanted budgies but wanted cockatiels instead. She had given Bodie's budgie friend away and was going to "set free" the disfigured budgie that nobody wanted. Her rescuer called her Crusty and had had her for six weeks without taking her to a vet. Her little tortured face reminded me of the boy in the movie Mask. I had a hard time waiting the 36 hours until I could take Bodie to her vet appointment.

Bodie, once treated, healed quickly from the face mites. Along the way, she gained a budgie companion named Princess Bitsy Schoolgirl, became egg bound and was hospitalized for a week and has had a cancerous tumor removed twice from the edge of her right wing. She also chewed balsa wood like a tiny yellow beaver, enjoyed budgie videos on YouTube and foraged with gusto for her food through piles of foot toys that I put in her dishes.



Below are pictures of Bodie with her friends Princess and Tookie. (Princess died 11/12/09 from "multiple organ failure, cause unknown". She went blind while she was at the vet but she died peacefully at home- eating up until lights out the night before she died.)





I know that I'm not supposed to attribute emotions and should only report behaviors but I don't know how not to say that Tookie misses Bodie a lot. He has been angry, restless, loud and hostile ever since I lost her. It's not like they were that close... Bodie was like the pesky little sister that Tookie never wanted- always following Tookie around and copying whatever Tookie did. I had to watch them like a hawk to make sure they didn't get into an argument. But I can see now how important Bodie had become to Tookie.

Bodie- come home, Honey.



Three days after she was lost, I got a call from a little boy who found her and had her in a box but then she got out of the house while he was away at school. I got a call this morning from a young lady who said she had found her and the details sounded right but when I got there the address didn't exist and the phone number was wrong. I'm surprised I haven't gotten more crank calls- with my number and wide-open heart plastered all over.

If you think you know where in San Francisco Bodie is, please contact me at AdoptKings@gmail.com. If you find a stray bird, please help it. If you have a pet bird- beware. There are so many ways to lose them.