PeeWee came to our house when I was about three years old. My first memory of him is being in his cage that Mom had placed in the bathroom window. This observation point was perfect for him. One direction faced directly into the backyard where he could commune with the outside birds and dream of freedom. With the window open anyone in the yard working could talk to him. The opposite direction allowed him to view straight through the dining room and living room to the front door. The only place he couldn't see you was in the kitchen or bedrooms. PeeWee had a great setting, a great imagination, a great personality, and a very ornery streak.
I'm not sure why we named him PeeWee, other than his size. Most of the time mom and dad were trying to get him to say "Liberace", the name of a famous piano player at the time. Mom would say, "Call me Liberace." But the whole sentence never came. He would say "Liberace" and then laugh, "yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk", which sometimes sounded like my mother and other times more like my dad. PeeWee laughed constantly, and always sounding like one of them. What was so unnerving was that he had the ability to understand what he was laughing at. If mom made a mistake in the kitchen she would say, "Oh, rats!" Immediately PeeWee would say, "Oh, rats!" And then he would laugh. My dad would tell us a joke, and PeeWee would laugh. He would say, "That's a good one, yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk."
PeeWee was allowed to roam the house on most days. We never clipped his wings, so he had full power to fly where he wished. Sometimes he would fly around from window to window, stretching his wings and laughing. He might stop long enough to look around and say "PeeWee's a pretty bird." Then he would fly some more. He especially liked hanging out in whatever room mom was, sitting on the window curtain or on her shoulder. He couldn't stay on her shoulder for long because she was always moving around, so he had to find a station for observation. Mom sang continually, and he loved this, so he listened and sometimes he would repeat a word. More often he would just chatter along in his bird chatter. He stopped when she stopped, and he chattered as she sang.
When we moved to Falls City PeeWee's cage no longer had such good views, so mom would take him in his cage to sit on the porch or hang on the clothesline. Here PeeWee chattered and whistled and talked all day long to his feathered friends. We had to watch for cats, but PeeWee warned us if one came into the yard with such shrieking and fluttering that we knew to hurry out to save him from someones lunch, though they couldn't have gotten to him in his cage. We brought him in nonetheless.
More about outdoors later. I told you that he was ornery, and so I must explain some of the antics we had to tolerate. PeeWee loved butter. We learned to keep a lid on the butter dish or we would find little peck marks all the way around the edge. He loved to chew on the curtain tops as he perched. Mom continually had to either chase him off or replace the lace curtains. The curtains didn't get replaced until they were totally ragged along the top from one side to the other. You could hear him chewing, and then he would laugh, because he knew he wasn't suppose to be doing it. Often those curtains had to be washed....bird poop, you know.
PeeWee loved to tease and play with my mother. He would dive-bomb her head while she was cooking, grabbing at a strand of hair as he passed. Then he would sit up on the curtain and laugh before he went back for more. He would talk to her, then dive at her head and perch and laugh. But one day PeeWee went just a little too far. My mom was making a big pot of vegetable soup and as she stood at the stove stirring and singing PeeWee decided he wanted to play dive and scoop. Mom heard him flying toward her and ducked, and PeeWee flew into the back of the stove, knocking him senseless, and falling directly into the boiling pot of homemade vegetable soup. Mom screamed, grabbed a large spoon and dove in after him. She wrapped him in a towel and went to the sink to put him in cool water. We almost had parakeet for dinner that night, but mom was quick enough to save our poor little baby. After he was calm and shivering and wrapped into a soft clean tea towel we were astonished to see a totally naked bird. PeeWee had not one feather left on his body. The boiling soup had completely stripped him, and he was the most pathetic sight you would ever see.
He couldn't eat; he couldn't drink. Mom nursed him back to health over the next few weeks with an eyedropper, making sure he drank plenty of water. Eventually he began to have a little fuzz on his body, then feathers. He began to eat a little lettuce as mom held it for him, then some bird seed. It took weeks, but he was nursed back to health, just as pretty as ever, just as ornery as ever, and with just as good a vocabulary.
PeeWee spent most evenings on my shoulder sleeping until it was time for bed. He cuddled into my neck as far as he could, snuggled his head under my chin or into his feathers, hunkered down, and there he stayed. Oh how I loved this bird. He was warm and funny and sweet. On really cold nights PeeWee would crawl into the front of my blouse and nestle on my chest to sleep. While he was awake and sitting on my shoulder he would talk and tell me how pretty he was, and how dirty. "PeeWee's a dirty bird. yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk." "Well, I'll be a dirty bird." We taught him to say this because it was a famous saying by George Gobel, a famous TV comedian. "Look out, PeeWee! Look out, PeeWee! yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk." "Gimme a kiss. Come on. Gimme a kiss." Then he would scoot over to my cheek and kiss me. He did this to mom, as well, but for some reason he never asked dad for a kiss. He would sit on his shoulder, but never ask for a kiss. He also kissed mom and I on the lips, and he was very gentle about it. PeeWee almost never bit, but I remember a couple of times when he got mad and bit me if I put my thumb on his feet to keep him from flying. Dad or mom would be going out the door and I didn't want him to fly out with them.
One summer day mom took PeeWee in his cage outside to clean it. PeeWee's cage was shaped as a rectangle, which made it easier for him to sit on the top and move around. It also makes it easier to hang bells and treats on the inside, and it is bigger than most cages. As mom pulled the sliding floor out the paper on it caught about halfway, and it tilted the cage just enough for a frightened bird to fly out and right on up into the apple tree. Mom called and called. PeeWee laughed and laughed. He talked and whistled to the birds, and when mom called him he laughed. This went on for hours. I called. PeeWee laughed. I tried to climb the tree, but he was so high up that I couldn't get to him. And he laughed. Mom and I were both frantic, but he just wouldn't fly down. Hours passed and then we didn't hear him anymore. He had flown away, and I cried myself to sleep that night. There could never be another bird like him, and my heart was broken.
After a week of calling and watching I finally gave up and realized that I was not going to see PeeWee ever again. By this time I was sure he was dead from exposure and not eating or drinking. But about two weeks later mom saw an ad in the paper in the Lost and Found that a parakeet had been found. Mom immediately called the number. Mom described PeeWee to the man, but other than being green and a parakeet, was there any other way to identify the bird, the man asked. Mom thought for a minute. Yes! Our bird has an identification band on one of his legs with the number 69 on it. That was it! They had found PeeWee. We hurried to pick him up at the sight where he had been found. The city was building a new elementary school, and one of the workers had found PeeWee sitting on the old merry-go-round. He was battered and tired, and he let the man pick him up with no resistance. We brought him home and treated him to the very best treatment ever. He was even allowed a little dab of butter to peck on.
It was a while before PeeWee began to chatter and talk, and even longer before he wanted to play dive-bomber. There was little laughter for quite a while. PeeWee was very glad to be home, and he wasn't in the mood for much nonsense. But he eventually perked up and was the same old tease, with lots of laughter and diving.
We also had to be careful when we ran our bath water to be sure the door was closed. He loved to dive through the water as it was coming out which invariably knocked him down. He was able to fly out of the water to repeat the process until he was too wet to fly. So we kept the door shut, and kept a small bowl of water on a table so that he could swim and splash safely and at his leisure.
PeeWee had a very large bell in his cage. Mom had received it from Dad and it had a small bottle of nice perfume attached to it. So, PeeWee inherited the bell, and he loved to place his whole body inside it and sleep. Inside the bell was a little ball on a piece of thick string, and he could beat on this bell with his bill and make a lot of noise, ringing and shrieking, and, of course, laughing at himself. He could see his image in the bell, and it was just a delightful addition to his many toys. While we were gone to town that day PeeWee decided to take a nap inside his bell. We can only imagine what caused him to get wrapped up in that string, but when we got home we found a bloody bird laying on the floor at the side of his cage. Somehow he had gotten the string with the ball on the end of it wrapped around and around his neck. When he realized he was caught he had flapped and fought his way, bell and all, down the side of the cage and onto the floor where he lay exhausted and not appearing to breathe.
We got him out of the cage and clipped off the string with scissors. He had beaten himself raw of feathers in many parts of his head and neck and wings. He was a sad, bloody mess. He was barely alive, and once again my mom spent weeks feeding him water with an eyedropper, hand-feeding him lettuce and bird seed. He slept on my chest whenever I was home from school, and I never let him out of my sight. His cage had always been covered for the night, but now I not only covered it, but I kept it close, either having it in my room or sleeping on the couch. And wouldn't you know it, PeeWee grew back to health, and was the same old stinker that he had always been. This bird had nine lives.
PeeWee said lots of words, some in sentences, some just words he heard that he repeated. He knew when to say "Give me a kiss." He knew when to laugh, especially at mom. He was one of the smart ones. I've seen many instances when people have tried to teach a bird to talk and they never do. I'm not sure if it's the bird's fault or the teacher's, but I know that he was quick to learn and he knew when to say things.
One thing my mom and I thought was one of the funniest things is when my Grandma who we lived with would get angry. She often would slam doors and move her furniture around in her room and stomp through the house from the bathroom and back to her room. When she did this PeeWee would laugh at her as she passed his cage. She would stop, give him a dirty look, make a scoffing sound and stomp on, to which PeeWee would laugh. He really was a bad, bad bird. And mom and I were bad for thinking this was funny.
One morning when I was 16 I was in the bathroom getting ready for school. The door opened and my mom walked in and sat down on the edge of the tub. She asked me to sit down with her, then told me that during the night PeeWee had died, that she had found him on the floor of his cage and that dad had immediately taken him out to the back to bury him so that I wouldn't have to see him. It took old age to kill such a fine bird. Nothing else could overtake him.
My life has been blessed with many pets that were dear to me. PeeWee was the first. He was the bravest. And he was the most exasperating pet I've ever seen. To this day I think of him and smile with admiration. PeeWee was a dirty bird.
