I had a rather traumatic start to my day this morning. I was woken up about forty-five minutes early by the noise of Yuuki falling from his perch and crashing to the floor of his cage – not an unusual occurance for him. Normally he recovers quickly from this sudden attack of clumsiness, but this morning it sounded to my sleep-fogged brain like he was taking an awfully long time to sort himself out. I got up to uncover his cage and take a look, and when he didn’t seem himself, I reached in and brought him out. This led to a panicked flight around the room that ended with a crash landing down the side of the bed, and a lot of freaking out from both of us. I was stressed, he was stressed, so I put him gently back into his cage where he sat on his perch in a disheveled feathery lump, feet splayed wide, and one eye closed.

Now convinced that Yuuki was going to die, I started to make plans for calling in sick at work and wondered what time the bird hospital on Broadway opened. I lay in bed watching him, knowing there was nothing I could do except hope for the best. Over a ten minute time span he slowly perked up until he was moving around at his normal energetic pace, and when he went over to the toy bells to bang around and make noise, I knew he was fine.

The whole experience reminded me a bit too much of what happened with the lovebird I had before Yuuki. I woke up one morning to find her very unwell, and despite a visit to the emergency animal hospital, by the end of the day she died. I’m very relieved this wasn’t the scenario I had to go through with Yuuki this morning. I’d like to have the little guy with me for a long while to come.

Yuuki’s photo set on Flickr.