We were out with a friend in Santa Cruz California when she decided to
go to a pet store to get crickets.
We walked into the store and we saw a woman and her son with baby
lovebirds running all over them, playing with their hair and clothes.
We thought "those must be their babies" and I HAD to go over and
say hi.   I asked about them, not knowing anything about lovebirds.
The mom said that these were the store's birds and that they were
thinking about them.  She held out her arm and the little guys started
jumping on and running up and down my arms.
They were amazingly friendly, inquisitive and energetic.   After  a
while I noticed the cage where they had been staying - it had this sign
on it...



My wife, Sara, came over and I handed her one of the babies.   We were smitten.
The Mom and her son came to the conclusion that they were going to bring two of the
four chicks home.   The two that we were holding seemed very attached to each other
and I couldn't stand the thought of them being split up.   So that was that.

I didn't know that that moment was going to change my life.

We brought them home, with a lovebird book.   I was thrilled to get them home but
also nervous because I knew nothing about lovebirds.   I was worried about what they
eat, what they were used to sleeping in, their environment, the noise from the other
birds (conures - more about them later),  everything.

The babies settled right in.  They had a plush pod to sleep in but instead chose to
sleep on top of it.   After we put them to bed, I peeked in to see how they were
doing.  They were snuggled together with their heads behind their backs.  There
were times when they seemed to form a valentine heart shape with their fluffy little bodies.



Our days became filled with the babies running around on us, preening our hair, chewing
on shoe laces, removing buttons from our clothes and otherwise being cute.  When they
would run out of steam, they'd start getting sleepy-eyed and want to snuggle up against
your nose.  They would get all fluffy and do their sweet happy beak crunching.  We were
used to sleepy time beak crunching with The Bigs (the conures) but the lovebird crunching
was so small sounding and cute.



Between the play times and the snuggle times, we had become "paralyzed by cuteness"
so very little else was happening in our lives.   Sara and I would spend so many hours
this way that our shoulders started hurting.

There was something very special about these two.   I felt like they just radiated love
and trust.   In an instant, they had taken up a very special place in our hearts.

The Bigs had their own personalities - Birdy, crusty but lovable.  Aki, Queen of clowns.
And Squeek - the little pirate with multiple personalities.

The babies were love, joy and happiness - and huge personalities - in tiny fluffy
bodies.   They were amazing - and still are.

After watching the two of them for a couple of days I started to get the feeling that one
was a boy and the other a girl.  I couldn't be sure.   Either way I thought about what
their names should be.   The boy's name came first - Boomer.  He was just so willful,
adventurous and cheerful.  Boomer indeed.
Next came the girls name.  She was quieter, a little more cautious but still very friendly.
She had a call that she would use with us that Boomer didn't.  It reminded me of a poem
that I had read that was written be someone at MIT.  They talked of their computer
terminals "feeping, gently feeping".   Feep!

Boomer and Feep!

Time passed and the babies started getting more of their adult colors in.   The Bigs
were pretty-much getting along with the babies, but not really interacting with them.

Here's a typical morning before going off to work.


Squeek on head, Boomer, Feep, Birdy and Aki.

The Bigs tried to be friends.  Birdy even offered Boomer a cashew, but Boomer got
defensive and chased him off.  That was it.  Birdy doesn't give second chances and
has a very long memory.   After that, I had to keep them apart from each other.

Boomer and Feep had a morning ritual.  You would take them out of their cage,
hold them over the waste basket and they would let out their gigantic morning poops.
After that it was play time with the manditory quick pause at Sara's watch.  They
would both work on it until they had popped out the stem and stopped her watch.
They got so good at it that they would often pop it out as they ran up her arm.
It would happen so quickly that Sara wouldn't realize it until she got to work and her
watch still said 8:30.





Night time was especially sweet.  Boomer and Feep would get tired and then run into
my sleeve and start crunching.  It wasn't long before they would be asleep.



I would feel these warm little bodies snuggled into my armpit.  Yet more reasons to have
aching shoulders.   They like my left arm best.

Boomer and Feep taught us their language, what sounds mean what.  They also picked
up a couple of words from Squeek.  One is "diddly" (with a head shake) which means
"really good" and the other is "doh!"  which means "somethings wrong?!?!".

Together they created hundreds of little adventures.  They'd ride wind sculptures.  When
visiting Sara's workplace, the two of them would go running down the hallways looking in
offices and visiting people.

As the two of them grew older,  Boomer started doing funny things while he was out
playing with Feep.  He would climb up on a piece of broccoli  and balance on it.  When
he would get good at it he would start "puttering" and scratching his head.   It didn't
take long to figure out that he was practicing his courting moves.
Not long after, Feep started doing her own growing up.   She started getting "hormonal"
and would start becoming territorial about my sleeve.   She was also getting very interested
in checking out every place she could that might make a good nest.



Some nest ideas weren't as good as others...  Like this CDROM enclosure.

While Feep spent her time doing hen-things, Boomer would take breaks and come back
and hang out with us.   He loved us both, but he had a special bond with Sara.   No matter
what was happening in his life, he would always make time to snuggle with us.   When
he settled in and fell asleep against my nose, it felt as if he was always going to be there.



And he couldn't pass up Sleeve Time...



Sooo  happy in the sleeve.

Lovebirds are known for their "lovingness"  and Boomer and Feep were no exception.
Feep had been working on her nesting skills and I had been overwhelmed by their
sweetness so...



I thought that it would be nice to let them have kids.   It was - and Boomer and Feep were
great parents.

All of the "babies" have distinct personalities, but Boomer has always been good at letting
us know exactly what he wants.   When he wants something he leans in that direction and
bobs his head.  When he REALLY wants something, he uses his wings to stress how
important it is to him.



Boomer and Feep were the undisputed King and Queen of the The Flock.
When they would come through, everyone stepped aside (especially when Feep is the
one leading the way.)

Everything was going fine until seven years later, in May of 2008.   I noticed that Boomer
seemed to be having labored breathing.  I reached over and picked him up.  I immediately
noticed a lump on his chest.   Oh god no...  I gently touched other parts of his body and
felt two more, one next to each leg down near his bottom.   I set him back down on his
cage, told Sara, and started to cry.   As always, when something bad happens it happens
on Saturday night.  Monday morning I call to get him in to see the vet.
They looked him over and didn't even want to bother doing x-rays.  They said that the
fact that there were three tumors meant that surgery wasn't really an option.
More tears.    I dried my eyes for the trip home.

I could hear clicking in Boomer's chest as he breathed.  The tumors grew so quickly that
they seemed to come out of nowhere.   I had been doing some research on anti-angiogenic
drugs and their ability to stop or shrink tumors.  It was a slim chance, but I had to try it
on Boomer.   One thing was for sure, after what had happened with Honey, I wanted to
make sure that Boomer's last days would be like a trip to a big love-and-food filled amusement
park.  Anything he wants he gets.  Anywhere he wants to go.  Anything at all.  It's all for
him.  I figured that, how fast the tumors were growing, that he only had a few days to live.

I started Boomer on the drugs, which luckily didn't have a noticeable taste,  and Sara and I
dropped everything else in our lives to take care of him.   Days went by and it seemed
like the tumor growth slowed dramatically.  I had hope that, maybe, they might start to
shrink.



The tumors were pushing his tail up out of position when the picture above was taken.
A lot of his time was spent eating and snuggling.   Entire evenings were spent holding him.
He especially loved being with Sara.



Week after week started to pass and, even though the tumors were growing slowly,
Boomer seemed to be able to adapt to them.   He was still his active cheery self.  He
constantly amazed us!
We spoiled him to the extreme.  He could eat anything he wanted and go or do anything
that wasn't too insane.  He liked cashews, Eggo waffles, millet, and apple.  Later he
changed his mind and focused on waffles, cherries and Cap'n Crunch.  He would have to
dip them in his water dish first, then pull them out and eat them.   He also got sprouted
wheat berries.  He ate spaghetti and scrambled egg.

Once the others in the flock figured out that he was ill, they stopped treating him like a
King.  Some males started pushing him around.  So Boomer and Feep were allowed out
when no one else was.  He would go over to the window and look out or just sleep in the
warmth of the sun.   He would tell Sara and I what he wanted to do or eat by pointing and
bobbing. We called it "driving".  Boomer would wake up from a snuggle nap and start pointing.
He would stand on our hand and lean, point and bob.  He was so smart about it that it
made us laugh.  Boomer would drive us out of the studio, and down the hall.  Stop at the
bird room.   He'd then start pointing 90 degrees to the left and we would head off to the
kitchen.  Once there he'd direct us to the pantry and point at the bag of millet, the
cashews, or the Cap'n Crunch box.   Sometimes he would drive me into the kitchen
but instead of directing  me to the pantry, he would have me walk over to the wood
stove.  I didn't get it at first, but then he'd point and bob at the wall behind the stove -
Oh yeah, the morter between the bricks!  He likes to pick pieces off and eat it.

One day he drove me out to the kitchen again, past the pantry, past the bricks, and
down the hall to the bedroom.  I had no idea what he was thinking until he pointed
at the sweatshirt on the end of the bed.   I couldn't believe it.  He wanted me to put
on my sweatshirt so he could go to sleep in my sleeve!   He remembered that the
sweatshirts were in the bedroom!

Boomer also remembered where the millet USED to be!
He would drive me over there for a while until he realized that I had moved it.
Boomer got very perplexed one day when I had run out of millet.  He took me to
the spot and pointed and pointed.  He looked at me like "make it appear here".
I kissed him on the head and told him that we were out of it and he had to pick
something else.   He sat for a second, then turned around and pointed at the
oatmeal cookie bag.  I broke off a piece and he happily started eating that instead.

My optimism for Boomer started  to change when the anti-tumor drug started to
cause bleeding in him.  I took him off the drugs and the bleeding stopped right
away, but soon after, the tumors started growing faster.  Boomer had made it
to the five-week mark and was still pretty active.   After the drugs stopped,
that started to change.  The tumors grew and grew - especially the ones between
his legs.  The tumors were starting to badly effect his ability to poop.
We kept making sure that he was eating enough liquidy things and drinking water
to keep things flowing in him.   Lots of soft food.

About a week or two ago he started having bad spells.  He'd seem like he was on
his way out and then he'd pick himself back up and keep going.   I took him for
walks outside.  I'd show him the outdoor birds.  He didn't seem to care about them.
He just liked being in the sun and dozing.

Feep seemed to know what was going on with Boomer and started coming along
with him - leaving her nest.   In the past she never went more than a few feet from
her nest.



This is them on one of their last dates together.



The sicker Boomer got, the more he wanted to be held, but also be under a light to keep
warm.   Many of his last days were like this.



Three days ago Sara awoke to find that Boomer had been climbing down the inside of
his cage to get to his water dish and got one of his talons caught on the towel that was
covering the cage.  She found him hanging by his toe, upside down, with half his body in
the water dish.  She thought that he was dead, but she saw him blink.  Sara got his toe
unhooked and wrapped him in her hands and woke me up.   I scrambled to get him under
a light and warm him up.  His breathing was very shallow and fast.  We thought that he
would be dead in minutes.
I kept him warm and he slowly came to.  He was shocky and dazed.  I could tell that
the leg he was hanging by hurt as well.  I tried giving him water, cherry, anything.
He wouldn't eat or drink.  I figured that he had made the decision to go...

I kept saying that I didn't want his last night alive to be in pain.
An hour went by.  After a while something changed.  He got more active and took a drink
of water.  Minutes later and he was eagerly eating warm scrambled egg and waffle.
Later in the day he was acting like himself again.  We couldn't believe he had come back
from the brink like that.

Boomer was back, but much much weaker than before.  Even though he still wanted
to go and do things, the accident and the tumors left him weak and unstable.  Over the
next two days he started to decline again and this time there was no coming back.

Even though he was looking gaunt and uncomfortable, he still enjoyed a big waffle meal
and a few trips to the kitchen for cashews.  He didn't look good.  The tumors were now
almost have his body mass and he had a very hard time pooping.   I was struggling, again,
with the decision of waiting or ending his life myself.  We both spent the night holding
Boomer - always under a light for warmth.

I gave him something to help him sleep and help deal with the pain.  He was breathing
faster now and looked strained when I put him to bed.    I woke up sweating at 3:30AM
and checked in on him.  He looked exhausted and was still breathing fast.  I thought to
myself that tomorrow would have to be his last day - he just looked to distressed.   I
picked him out of his food dish, wiped his butt, and put him back on the fuzzy pod
laying next to the light.   I went back to bed.   I was falling asleep when I heard what
sounded like the sound of a bird shaking their feathers out.  It sounded like it was
in the bedroom right next to me.

When we got up Saturday morning Boomer was dead.

I miss him.  Sara said that he was the only bird that she has ever deeply loved - and ever
will.   We both wonder why it had to be Boomer.   I wonder why it was Honey
and Boomer - the ones closest to me, that had to die.   It's just wrong.
I think back on what may have caused it.  Was it the ethoxyquin, a preservative, that was
in his food from when he was born until a year ago?   Was it some contaminant  in the
Chinese made snuggle pods he slept in?  Was he born with the tumors like ticking time
bombs under his skin?
I doubt that I will ever know.   All I do know is that his last months were the best that
we could possibly make for him.   I know that counts for something.

Boomer, our beloved.
January 15 2002 - July 26 2008

"Take a little piece of my heart..."