By Bob Street
Back in I think it was 1989, the day before my birthday, my wife Pat gave me a “pre-birthday gift”. It was an issue of The National Inquirer. This was given without explanation other than it would become apparent the next day.
On my birthday, she gave me a small light blue and white parakeet in a standard-appearing cage. The paper use was immediately obvious. I named the little guy “Ernie.” It just looked like an Ernie.
A few weeks passed, Ernie seemed to be doing OK, but I thought he might be lonely and I purchased “Doris” to keep Ernie happy. In the meantime, Pat wanted to get an African gray parrot, and she picked a young one that looked like a “Perdue Oven Stuffer.” She wanted a male, was told to look for one with a flat head and she named it Moses, rather than Otis which was my first choice.
We got a large cage for Mo, about 24-cubic-feet which I referred to as a “condo” not to offend Mo as to being in a cage but rather “air real estate.” It occurred to me that Ernie and Doris would like a larger condo as well and I got them a similar sized condo with closer bars. Time marched on, Mo grew feathers and no longer needed to be fed powdered millet with a syringe. I kept the parakeet condo in my home office and Mo’s condo was in the eating area in the kitchen.
When Ernie laid five eggs which produced five new chicks, I had to rethink bird names and decided to switch names. Nee Doris became Ernie and Nee Ernie became Doris. At that time, we were not too concerned about pronouns and neither of the birds displayed any concerns either. The offspring were given to other families as I did not want to experience any birds trying to pick up chicks at a family get-together. There was a lot of room in the condo, so I went out and got Bubba and Peggy Sue.
They were ordinary-looking green parakeets, none of the flair that Doris and Ernie had. As I said, the condo was in my office, it was located out in the middle of the room in front of my desk, between my office manager and project manager desks.
As it turned out, Bubba had eyes only for Doris, and Doris, the little hussy, swooned over Bubba. It was like the theme of Love Story was running 24-7. Poor Ernie stood on a stick and watched the two of them day after day, making parakeets. Peggy Sue did not seem to care one way or another and Ernie finally (we think) committed suicide. Doris showed no concern; Peggy Sue stood in the corner and the happy couple just could not get enough of each other.
About three years passed, and Doris finally died peacefully, hopefully in her sleep. I wanted to give her a proper burial in the flower beds, but it was mid-winter with snow and frozen ground. My project manager suggested a burial at sea, but I could not even think of doing that to her. My solution was cryogenic maintenance and for weeks Pat would remind me that Doris was in the Sub Zero. Spring came and she (Doris, not my wife) received a proper burial in the flower bed outside the kitchen window. At that point, I gave the remaining two and their condo to friends.
It was probably another 10 years before I realized that we had also mis-gendered Moses. As it turned out, she had only eyes for me and though she was OK with Pat, she did not want any other women to get near me. Some thought that a name change was in order and “Mosetta” was suggested by friends, but we did not wish to create any more conflict in her psyche. The subject of pronouns never came up. To this day, Mo does not like to have any women around and considers them all competition.