Barsch - Perch

I used to have a budgie. Several in fact. Not at the same time - the cage would just be restocked within a week of its previous tenant dropping off the perch. When you’re young, you don’t quite grasp how fragile an animal a small, multicoloured diminutive bird can be, so playtime with Budgie Number Three: Bluie (he was mostly blue) sometimes got a bit rough. I understood that cats and birds never got along, so was careful enough not to let them mingle too much when we let Bluie out of his home. However, I did own a classic piece of late 80’s, early 90’s plastic toy shite in the form of a Big Yellow Teapot - basically a big yellowy teapot -come- miniature home for small figurines and their uncomfortable, but handily (for them, I‘m sure) wipe-clean furniture. Looking back, I’m in total denial it was some form of doll’s house, so shhh. It really wasn’t. Okay, it might have been. The lid came off and you could, for some reason, swivel the central wall around, just in case living in a giant tea-brewing device wasn’t exciting enough. But anyway, putting little Bluie inside (the Teapot) seemed like both an interesting and hilarious thing to do. And it was for a time, until the wall-spinning feature was introduced to the playmix, ultimately resulting in a distressing freak accident that left my beloved pet with his head stuck between the inner and outer wall. Squawking like a bird close to decapitation (it‘s an all too familiar squawk), his shrieking and squirming did more to hinder than assist the rescue operation. It also didn’t help that the others inside the teapot didn’t lift a finger - they just stood there, gawping with their smug that’s-what-giant-birds-get grins plastered across their chops. Eventually, after about an hour, we managed to pull him free, but not before he’d shat almost his entire body weight on Mr and Mrs Teapot’s duvet and chaise lounge. I left it there to teach them a lesson. Given, their home was invaded by what was to them essentially a velociraptor who proceeded to scratch up and stomp all over their possessions, but by not doing anything to help poor Bluie made them just as guilty as whoever got his head jammed in the first place. Anyway, the Teapot and its Al Qaeda inhabitants have long since been pawned, and as for Bluie and his two or three successors, they’re all dead now. He did actually survive an extra year and a half after that fateful afternoon, but cervical cancer got him in the end. Turned out he was a bird.