Blue budgie found in back garden

When I spotted three dead animals on my way to work yesterday it felt like an omen.

I rode my bike along the usual route, but I saw a dead mouse in the gutter on the corner. Next I passed a flattened pigeon. Then I found a mauled and bloodied sparrow.

It's not unusual to pass a dead squirrel on the road in the fall or a dead bird throughout the summer months, but never have I seen three dead animals in a row.

Tonight I was eating supper with my parents in the back garden when a blue budgie landed on the birdbath alongside some sparrows.


At first I thought it was fantastic that the budgie was free, but then realized there are many threats out of doors for a tame bird.

I telephoned the Toronto Humane Society and was told to call animal control. The Humane Society also suggested I post a "found" ad on their Website, which I did.

Animal control said to call back in the morning if the budgie were still there, which of course it was not.

My father found a cage I had turned into a prop for a Fringe Festival play and suspended it from a hook near the cedar tree where the bird was roosting. He left its door open so the budgie could fly inside for safety.

My mother remembered that when she was a girl she and her brother John had two budgies that lived by the grandfather clock in her cottage in the English village where she grew up. One day she came home and the budgies were gone.

She thinks her mother gave them away because they were so messy.

My parents reported no further sightings of the blue budgie the following day, but left the cage out just in case it returns ~