Winged friends

When my niece was in primary school, I presented her with a dazzling pair of love birds on her sixth birthday. They were bright, lively, and charming. One was bright yellow, with white circles surrounding its eyes. The other one was bright green. All day they would sing, play, or quarrel with each other. The birds had a comfortable, large cage.

After coming back from school, my niece kept on watching them and talking with them. Soon they became her best friends. They used to sing to her. She liked to feed them and clean the droppings. When the birds saw other birds outside their cage, they screamed as if to fly with them.

One day, I noticed the yellow bird was trying to open the cage. It managed to break free. A crow was watching it at the distance. Then the it grabbed the poor bird in its beak and flew away in front of my own eyes. There was nothing I could do!

From that day the female bird was very upset; she did not take food or even water. So, one day we left the cage door open so that she could fly. I was surprised because, she didn't fly away. I clapped my hands and said, “Shoo.”I shook and shook the cage to encourage her to go. Despite peep her head out, the bird remained inside the cage. I thought about what had happened to her. Why wasn’t she flying?

Soon I went to the pet shop and asked about it. Shopkeepers replied that they were born in the cage and did not learn how to fly. Then I bought one male bird to accompany the female. From then on, both the birds were happy. We gave them straw and stick to build a nest, and they even had a pair of baby birds soon after that.

From those incidents I learned that sometimes freedom might even mean to be able to stay with the ones you love. From then on, I seldom purchased birds as gifts.

"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness" (Alejandro Jodorowsky)