27. Sherlock

Dear London Fire Snake Scorpio,

I have told you before that I have birds. I’d like to tell you about them today. Last year was a year of many changes for me. As for my birthday, I often delay or “forget” it completely because my boy was born on my birthday, and I am usually consumed with making his day special. So, as I was celebrating my 40th birthday, I was alone in the morning, it was a school day, and I was utterly depressed.

Where I live, winter is long and demanding, and March is still a deep snow month. That means I do not leave the house for weeks at a time. With my neck arthritis and the extreme weather, I don’t leave the house unless I have to. And since I work from home, it is often the 15 minutes to walk to the kids’ school and back that is my “outside”. That morning, I was utterly depressed about it. I dropped the kids off at school, came home, and just sat there.

The kids have been begging me for a dog for ages. But the health insurance for a big dog (a small one would be trampled with my kids) and their monthly food costs make it impossible for me when I am fighting to feed the humans in the house. But the death of those days when the kids are with him is eating at me slowly, almost as much as the exhaustion of having them to myself 24/7. And so, three days before, a crazy idea got into my head to get a bird.

I called the pet shop and asked how much it would cost me. I read a little about them, and, in general, just the idea of having a living thing in the house while the kids are away made me happy. So off I went to the pet shop on my birthday to buy myself some parrots, though my economic situation was no better last year. On the phone, the pet shop guy said that birds don’t need vets for routine stuff (there are no vaccines), that their food costs about $14 a month, and that, for about $200, you can leave her with a cage and a bird.

I get into this pet shop, and the person I spoke to is not there. Instead, there is a chatty lady. She talks and talks and talks. She shows me birds, but no matter how you count it, I cannot make it less than 500, way more than what I was prepared for. Then she goes deeper into her bird’s room and digs a big cage with two birds inside. “Oh, I forgot about these two!” she says. My heart dropped when she said that. I always know when I meet what is mine, and they were mine before she even told me their story.

“I received them as a rescue,” she says, “no one knows what conditions they were in before. They are a very special pair. See, the green one is a Pacific Parrotlet — they are usually very solitary birds. The yellow one is a budgie. They are both male and are around 4–5 years old. I didn’t separate them because they get along so well, but I couldn’t put them with the others because the parrotlet isn’t really a social bird. They have been here for quite a while.” Their cage is filthy. I am looking at the damn nook in the back of that room she pulled them from, and asking myself if they are even fed properly. “If you take them, I will give you them both and the cage for 350$.”

Honestly? If she had said 700$ I would have still taken them. I couldn’t leave them there. I also bought food, toys, treats, and a carrier — by the end, it climbed to $500 pretty quickly. She took them out of the cage and clipped their wings. The budgie was scared, but she got him settled quickly, the parrotlet, haha, oh that one had spike. He bit her, and hung from her finger the whole time she was clipping him. Vicious in his attack. I felt fierce pride for the little fighter.

And so I got them into the carrier, stuffed them inside my winter coat, quickly got them into the cab, and brought them home. After I cleaned the cage, I set it in the hall and waited for the kids to come home from school. I told Drago and Stallion that they were their pets, but I and those two share a special bond. Though at the beginning they were just… You know… birds, haha.

After watching the two for a few good hours, the patterns became clear: the budgie was calm, solid, alert and brave. He was the first to try things in the cage and find food. The parrotlet was loud, quick and highly intelligent. And he truly hates humans. Oh shit, and now I am crying. I’m getting to it. The point is, he was playful with the budgie, played pranks on him. He pushed him into the water bath a few times, then climbed the perch, and I swear he sounded like he was bursting into laughter.

It was clear, wasn’t it? Two men, living together, one solid, brave and tolerant, while the other has a wicked sense of humour, a loud drama queen and hates humans. It was clear that only one logical set of names fit: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Here, I shot this the day I brought them home.

At first, Sherlock was loud and playful. And they got along very well. After all, they lived together for 4 years and in conditions that made Sherlock hate humans. But then, they became closer. Much closer. Ignorant as I was, I didn’t notice the signs; to me, they just looked cute, but they spent most of their day “hugging” on a perch and eating. Sherlock was very protective all of a sudden, and when I would open the cage to feed them, he would snap at me if I moved too close to Watson.

Then Watson’s upper beak became very, very long, and he started wheezing. And after delaying it as much as I could for economic reasons, I took both of them to the vet. I took Drago with me.

The vet took Watson to the check-up room, and when she came back, she showed us a massive black growth under his lower beak. “Cancer, probably,” she said. She had never seen it so aggressive. It “ate” all of his lower beak. “They were very close the past 5 months,” I tell her. “Sherlock probably fed him.” She replies, “Or he would have died months ago.” When she saw there was no beak under the growth, it was a done deal. He was suffering.

I grew up with chickens, you know, and saw my dad clip their heads when needed. So I am generally less attached to animals than most people. You will not hear me call my dog a fur baby. But I am a leader, and he was in my tribe, so the feeling was heavy. Drago was heartbroken, of course. I just felt the sharp ping of responsibility and how my ignorance probably made him suffer for long months. Shame. Yes. I was responsible for a life, and I didn’t do a good job keeping it.

So, as we are about to leave the vet, she says, “Are you sure you are up to caring for him? Most people, once one of their birds dies, give the other one. And he is an elder bird with arthritis in his feet and fiesty.” (he bit her, too, my fighter.) I am not a tall person, but I somehow become very tall when someone suggests I do not care for my own, even though my negligence actually proves the point. “He might be an old, crippled, cranky bird,” I say slowly, “but he is our old, crippled, cranky bird.” — “Good,” she smiled, “That’s what we love to hear.

So as we stand there with this hard feeling, about to leave, after she put dead Watson back into the carrier for Sherlock to know what happened to his mate, I was looking at Sher for a long moment. He fed him. For 6 months. He is a nurturer. This pacific parrotlet, a bird whose entire species is individualistic and not even social, fed him for 6 months. And he hates humans. I just knew it in my gut that if I took him home alone, he would die of loneliness.

So call me impulsive, but I decided to get him a friend. We go to the pet shop, and after a long discussion. We settled on a white budgie, a 4-month-old youngster. We called him Mycroft.

We brought Mycroft home that day, divided the cage (I have since bought them a new, bigger cage, obviously) into two separate partitions, and got each bird into its own space. I sat for hours, if not days, and read about the nature and raising of parrots — ignorance would not catch me twice, I said. And all the info said to let the birds get familiar with each other from afar for at least a month. But within three days, it was obvious that little Mycroft is freaking out, and Sherlock is trying to break the cage to get to the baby.

I let them in the same cage, and the nurturer adopted him immediately. That was in January. Sherlock was infinitely protective and patient; he taught Mycroft how to use the bath, where to eat and sleep and how to preen. The bath was hilarious. He would go to the tub and start showering, looking over his shoulder and calling the youngster to watch. The poor guy would fall, losing his footing over the arthritis, then climb back up and do it again. It made me tear up to think how he grew from the cheeky bird that I first brought home.

Here we are in April, and Mycroft has entered his teen years. For a few weeks now, he has been feeding Sherlock. I checked the knowledge base, which said this is normal social behaviour for birds, so I didn’t pay much attention. But I was so beat up today that I was lying on the couch while the kids were on their tablets, staring at the birds for a solid hour.

What I saw was that Mycroft was forcing Sherlock to eat. The old stubborn parrotlet, dignified as a proper English gentleman, didn’t scream or complain, oh, I wish he would. Mycroft came to his face time after time, and Sherlock retreated. He “chased” him around the cage for a solid 14 minutes before Mycroft finally kicked him, and I interfered. I took Mycroft out and settled him in the second cage, under that of Sherlock’s. For birds, being low in status is lower status.

Then I sat next to the cage to do some research. What I found out was that the traitor teen was seeking dominance and, with his conditions, the damn stoic moron could have had a heart attack if he had continued to tolerate that abuse. I let him down again. As I raise my eyes from my phone, utterly disgusted with myself, I see Sherlock sitting on a perch closer to me than he ever sat before. As if saying thank you. I burst into tears.

The taste of betrayal is bitter, and as Mycroft tried frantically to climb back to the second, higher cage, I saw Sherlock coming to the bottom of his cage, looking for his baby. My heart was clenched. That ungrateful fucking teen. I hope he was just hormonally hijacked, and he will come to his senses, or he will stay in his own cage from now on.

And so the plan now is to give Sherlock 2 weeks of quiet. I let him suffer for a few good weeks from this abuse, because I am a blind woman, and I need to give him the chance to recover. After that, I will unite them again and watch them. We might need to separate it a few times until the youngster gets it. No one, and I mean NO ONE, will bully a loyal nurturer who broke his damn back to teach you bath as long as I am here.

It just triggered me a little, I suppose, because of my latest entry. Kids can be shit, and I am feeling Sher. It’s not fair.

I wanted to write more. I had a major migraine yesterday and couldn’t bring myself to be coherent enough to write a word. I do have another topic I wanted to talk to you about—but it is 11 pm, and I must sleep. Tomorrow I need to start bouncing back.

I hope your world is full of loyalty, my love. 
I am sure I sound like an insane person, sitting here crying tears of anger over birds. But loyalty being met with abuse is an old wound for me.
We will talk again tomorrow. 
Good night, my love. 
Yours, 
Oxy. 
April 2, 2026.

Help me find him: Have you seen this man?