'BERYL AND THE BUDGIE BIRD'

I opened the door to our house just in time to see Mother staring into the bird cage. My sister Beryl had a budgie bird named 'Pete', and this bird was the household treasure for the month. Mother had the dishcloth in her hand and her hands on her hips, not a good sign, and she was doing quite an inspection of the cage.

She beckoned me over and said "Now, look at him and tell me what you think!"

I dropped my packages, purse, keys and books and hastened to see why in the world my mother was so distraught.

I did a short five-second visual inspection, then opened the cage door and stuck my hand inside to touch the little bird lying at the bottom of the newly cleaned little bird home. Yes, sure enough, he felt just like one of the little bird ornaments on the Christmas tree. A beautiful little bird had met his demise.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Mother.

"He's dead," I replied.

"No, he can't be, not now," Mother moaned, her hand over her mouth.

"Well, my dear mother, this bird is no more, he has ceased to be, he has shed his mortal coil, he is, in fact, quite dead," I managed to say, my mind by this time thinking this was very much like a 'Monty Python' skit that I liked and laughed about so much, the unforgettable John Cleese and the Parrot Sketch.

I looked up and smiled, I had made the worse move possible. I smiled. Mother was not happy. What were we going to do and whatever it was had to be done while my baby sister Kathy, just two years old, was having her nap?

This fuss was so unlike Mother, who accepted the life and death of our pets, cried with us and explained that we had to have our cry and then get on with our lives. This was the woman who put up with every kind of pet we brought home, stayed up all night with sick mommy cats and kittens, and believe it or not had suffered the unbelievable experience of having a cat go for the goldfish, the dog go after the cat, the previous budgie to this one, Jacko, got out of his cage and in all the fuss the water from her scrub bucket went everywhere, the fish went under a radiator and the bird had a heart attack and fell into her scrub bucket. Didn't faze her.

The heart attack was the kids' theory, but the bird did fall from the ceiling into her bucket. Yes, she had seen it all with five offspring and here she was crumbling over Pete, the deceased budgie bird.

Finally she found enough breath to tell me what the major problem was, and explained it in detail. She ended by saying, "You remember when Hortoise the Tortoise fell off the coffee table and died, well that was Beryls' pet too, and she was in the middle of exams and she went down in her average over that. And she is in the middle of exams again now. So she cannot know this happened!"

Enough said. Beryl was my sister, fourth in the family of five, beautiful and smart, kind and soft-hearted, and was protected quite a bit as she had been just a three-pound bundle of crying flesh at the time of her birth in a little hospital in Southern Newfoundland. But she survived. And Mother and I knew she would agonize over Pete, and she would possibly mess up on her exams. And messing up on exams was not acceptable to our parents. So something had to be done fairly quickly.

I was due at work as a Registered Nurse on a busy unit in about two hours so we set to work to fix the situation. We had to dispose of the body of Pete, the cage, food, and anything else around that could ever prove he existed in the household. That was my brilliant scheme! Kathy was due up from her nap, I had to get ready for work so we wasted no time and in less than an hour there was not a tidbit of evidence that there was ever a bird in our house.

Absolutely everything was taken care of, furniture rearranged to hide where the cage sat, Kathy woke up, I went to work, and Mother prayed!

So the daily routine of our lives continued on as usual. Beryl never mentioned Pete. David, our one brother, couldn't care less, so he was no problem, and everyone else was sworn to secrecy. Great plan, everything was left well enough alone. That is until a week later when Beryl finished her exams. My wedding plans were the big issue of the time, so we thought we were on easy street.

But one could never, and still should never underestimate this sister of mine. She was born small, but lived big. Her big smile, her happy-go-lucky nature, quick wit, and ability to be forgiven for the most awful clumsy accidents she would have, was a family story that went on and on. Beryl has a love of life that brings out the best in all those whose lives she touches. One year on a summer vacation to my mothers' home on the Labrador coast she got herself invited to go trout fishing. Of course all the fishing rods were lying crossways in the van, which was Ok until Miss Beryl decided to stand up, the van rounded a turn and down Beryl went, breaking off every single fishing rod!! And got hit with a fit of uncontrollable laughter and very quickly forgiven for breaking the gear.

That would not happen to anyone but Beryl. Such was the way her life went. Always forgiving, and always forgiven! We would just stare in wonderment with our mouths open at how she could do it, we wondered how to get so lucky.

But for some reason, she did not notice the missing 'Pete' or the cage, and went on about her life. The bicycles were getting out of winter storage and she was all caught up in that for a time. Mother and I stayed silent, hoping all would go well.

And then it happened. I noticed my sister standing in the area where the cage had been hanging, obviously deep in thought. We distracted her, but soon she was back in the same spot.

"There's something missing here," she announced. "Seems strange!"

Nobody spoke. Those who could, slipped away. Those who stayed just watched with nervous anticipation, fearing the jig was up-and it was!

"Didn't I have a bird here?" she asked. No answers were forthcoming.

"Yes, I did. I had a bird. His name was Pete. Where is he?" She was becoming a little more demanding now.

"The cage and stuff are upstairs," I finally coughed the words out.

"Why would you put him upstairs? I didn't see him up there!"she yells. And that is one thing she could do really well, and still can, is yell!

By now, Mother was expecting the worse.

"I said we put the cage upstairs. The bird is not in it. And besides it took you long enough to miss it," says I!

"Where's Pete? Where's my bird? Mooooooooooommmmmmmmm!"

Here we go I thought.

"Pete is dead, he is no more, he is gone, and it took you two weeks to miss him, so give it up," I yelled back.

Mainly because that is how sisters are sometimes.

"You mean to tell me he died two weeks ago? I never knew that. That's a riot, "and with that she started to laugh, and she laughed for half an hour, rolled on the floor, and of course the whole scene was hilarious, and soon we were all laughing.

In time she gathered herself together, told all her friends about her dead pet, passed her exams and provided in doing so another story for our list of crazy family antics. As for Pete, hopefully he is in Birdville, finally out of a cage and enjoying his freedom!

A very relieved older sister-Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe