Here's my ridiculous bird story.
My family inherited a small group of zebra finches in a pretty in a pretty big cage, 4 males and 4 females. They never breeded in their previous environment and lived very happily. So after a month at our place we have about 25 of the damn things, and they're cut as all get out by the way as they learn to fly and slowly mature. As time goes on the males start going psycho in a space which seems quite big even for the number but may not of been, and with no one volunteering to take finches, we had no recourse. Males starting picking on females, birds started dying, finally some were taken by a friend..
Any males who exhibited excessive violent behavior toward ailing females soon were ejected quickly out of the cage and into the west coast wild. After a long period of peace with about 12 finches, they started dying of natural causes and essentially stopped trying to breed. It came down to a few males and a female, and then finally to a single male, named Sam.
Sam was as tough as fucking nails. This finch lived alone for over four years, was no less than 7 years old (astronomical for a zebra finch), survived an infection which TOOK HIS EYE and in fact did not die of natural causes. This one-eyed finch survived years after all the others had died out, and years after he made myopic.
I killed Sam. I killed him because I was converting a guitar into a fretless guitar 50 feet away from him, and got halfway up the neck before I thought "oh, I should put the bird outside for this." For those who don't know, frets are pulled by briefly running a soldering iron over the metal bar which is the actual fret, heating it so the adhesive softens and the fret can be pulled off with some vice grips or whathaveyou. So basically I inadvertantly bird-slaughted the toughest Zebra Finch to ever exist on this planet. Birds, especially ones the size of a chicken mcgnugget, do not like noxious fumes, and that's almost certainly what did him in.
And you better bet your ass I felt really, really, sincerely, deeply bad about killing that little bird, for a few weeks at least, and instantly do again upon writing this.
So that's my bird story. First kind of funny, then savage, then just sad.
In response to your post Phish, yeah, parrots and cockatoo-type birds are on the of the few creatures with adequate capacity for intelligence and affection that they can actually go insane when their owner dies or goes absent. They're so long lived and so intelligent that, truly, they'll start plucking out their feathers and exhibiting other bizarre, repetitive behavior when neglected. Birds are some of the most impressive, amazing creatures, but they also require some of the greatest responsibility. Sam had a truly impressive amount of personality and obvious intellect for such a minute little thing.
