Did I really just Tweet that?

 

This photograph has so much good and bad in it all at once. Now, I know this makes no since to most of you reading this, maybe to all of you reading this so let me clear it up for you a bit.

     These birds are beautiful. The picture vibrant. Closing your eyes on a warm, rainy Spring day - you can hear their song in the most unusual of ways. Through their words, I personally can smell the Lilacs that grew outside the living room window at home. O! How I hated the scent of those. The purple color was so very inviting though, a warm hug to remind you of where you came from yet the smell always sticking me in the back of my head like a sharp stick in the most painful of ways.

     Parakeets remind me of that dark place - the place of my X-husband.
He always had a knack of giving me animals as gifts on holidays. I loved animals. They were always my weakness but for a odd reason - or was it? I grew a little less attached as time went on.
     Now I knew these were creatures that he - himself wanted and as soon as I made a fuss, time and time again he tired to pull off the old "but ... It's your birthday. Happy. Happy." For me the happy - happy drifted away long before any new year came around.

     It started out with a cat. I am a cat person. I love cats. I loved my cat. Okay, I love all cats but do NOT get me a cat. I have 3 right now. That is enough!
     Then he got the brightest idea to somehow surprise me with a rat for my anniversary. Okay so ... I did fall in love with it. Her name was Whisper because she would always lay on my shoulder, placing her nose in my ear - making tiny sounds.
     Along came another anniversary and another animal. This time it was a frog. You're cute! Not just any sweet little frog but a Jabba Frog. These are the ones like from the movies. They get to be huge. Big! Not the tiny cute little dwarf things you can hold in one hand - on the tip of your finger.

     Could we stop there? Are you kidding me? There were more birthdays and more anniversaries, Valentines day and Christmas. 

     We had numerous tanks with thousands of dollars of little fish swimming around in them. But of course the fish weren't the worst part ... we had to have these tanks custom made with custom stands. They housed salamanders, ghost shrimp and yea, even the dwarf frogs - I was talking about earlier. Each of these things could easily climb up or jump out of the tank to ... bask without water until they dried out and gained their angel fins.
     At some point we ended up with a Snakehead. Apparently this huge "fish" type of animal needed a home and was just given to us. That lasted about 4 nights until he slammed is head into the glass on the 75 gallon tank - shattering it at 2am while living on the 3rd floor of an apartment building. All the rest of the fish on the floor? Right into The Green River. Splash.   

     I was able to get a break for about 24 hours and then we "had" to start raising hamsters.  We had a Momma and a Daddy. Everyday we tried to breed them. Read about them, asked about them. Soon "we" were going to be "parents." All we had to do was get another tank and when the babies were born, move them away from the dad because if not he would kill them. Well, whoever the h*ll wrote the book on that was WRONG! The mom ate all the heads off the itty bitty things. Demonic b*tch. No rest for the wicked.

Side note: I almost forgot to mention the 500 crickets that came along with the Jabba Frog that for some reason when they were placed in their tank - the lid was forgotten to be put on and they were everywhere. In the cupboards, tub and shoes. I was not enjoying this at all. Even their lovely song at night seemed to p*ss me the h*ll off!

     I was done with animals. All animals. How silly of a girl I was, soon enough my home was taken over by parakeets. Not one or two but eleven. Sleep? Why sleep? Who needs it to function anyways? Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. I got so good at hurtling shoes at their cage with my eyes closed - that I could have been the next Babe Ruth and Stevie Wonder's love child.

     Having a "newish" baby around, the birds just weren't working out. The child was awake more then she rested. When was peace ever going to come? I knew if I b*tched about it enough then the birds would be rehomed. For some reason - I welcomed that. 
     It was a few days of silence until my X - went down to the office to drop off the rent money and came back with a Cockatiel. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how this bird fell out of the air and landed in our laps. Reality strikes - hard. The rent money was traded for a new feathery friend.

     I loved that bird but I also loved having a roof over my head.
Now with that being said - these gifts came from an X for this very reason.

                                                                                                                                                                Kazz 💋