On Sunday as I was recovering from watching The Human Centipede by watching a shitload of Sabrina and attempting to doze off, Ma started yelling about a king parrot, and how OMG there’s a king parrot down there!
I ignored her, because usually she does that when one lands on our balcony, so I figured I could just block it out and head back to dreamland. But then she started screaming for a towel, and Gabriel starting running around the house crazily, so I figured I had better get up and find out what the hell was going on.
I walked out of room to find Gabriel running down the hallway to the linen cupboard for a towel, so I asked her what happened.
“There’s a King Parrot down there! Your Ma thinks it’s hurt! Quick, quick!”
She grabbed a towel and we both ran downstairs and headed for the gulley in the backyard, where Ma was standing cradling something in her jumper. That something was squawking like crazy and obviously wasn’t happy about the situation.
Ma told us about how the butcher birds (assholes) were swooping him, and he wasn’t going anywhere so he was obviously hurt.
She brought him upstairs and put him in a box so we could figure out what to do.
I suggested she call the Emergency Vet Hospital down the road, but she flat out refused, saying that she didn’t like the people there. So I rang the OTHER vet down the road, and they put me through to some woman who obviously hated her job. I gave the phone to mum, because I couldn’t be assed dealing with an angry person.
All I heard was;
“Hello, I found a King Parrot in my backyard and he’s obviously hurt. (pause) Uh, no, he’s not mine. He’s wild. I found him in the backyard. (pause) Uh, right. Okay.”
Then she wrote down another number and I said something about how “fucking useless” that woman on the phone was, and she totally heard me and I’m glad, because she wouldn’t help us just because we didn’t own the parrot, which is a bitchy move.
So then mum rang the other number, and lo and behold it was the Emergency Vet Hospital I’d told mum to call in the first place. They said to bring him in, so mum gave me the box and she got the car out of the garage so I could get in.
The whole drive, which is only like ten minutes, I was cooing to the parrot so he’d stop squawking and he totally did, because animals love me. Mum drives like a dick when she’s in her Holden, so she was showing off and I was trying hard not to move the box too much, so in between all the cooing and naming of the parrot (King George. It’s a good, strong name. Right?), I was yelling at mum to slow down.
Just before the vet, we had to wait for a light to turn green. We were sitting there for five minutes and the lights STILL hadn’t changed, so mum just ran the red light. I should have high fived her for being a mad d00d.
When we got to the vet and the woman had buzzed us in, mum explained what happened again. The woman asked us to wait in the lobby and she took King George off me and walked off. She totally didn’t care that she was moving the box too much, and I was going to kick her in the head but I figured I should wait until AFTER she fixed King George.
While we were waiting, mum went on about how this wasn’t the vet she hated, it was the other one down the road (it’s vets galore around our hood), and oops she should have called these people first.
I sighed a lot, and put the hospital into Foursquare so I could get the five points from making a new venue.
A few minutes later, the woman came out again with the empty box.
“He didn’t make it. He was paralysed so we had to put him down. When we put him on the table, he just flopped and couldn’t move. I’m sorry.”
Mum and I looked at each other to see if the other was okay, and then mum launched into the story about how she found the bird to the woman. I don’t think the woman was very interested, but Ma likes to tell stories to strangers.
I was so sad about King George. I hate it when animals die. Like, in movies when a person dies I either laugh because I didn’t like them, or say dang and then forget about it, but when an animal dies, I can’t look because I’ll just start crying.
Mum loves her wildlife, so she was pretty sad too. Also, I think King George pooped on her jumper. It must have been his way of saying goodbye.
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