PEEPO

Well, we've talked about a bird with epilepsy, a bird with one eye who was possessed and various other animals who have crossed our paths and entered our lives. With that said, I'd like to pay tribute to PEEPO. Peepo was not a bird. She was a kitten. All of our animals seemed to have had some weird kind of quirk, well unfortunately, Peepo's problems were all my fault. You see, Peepo was a miniature kitten. That's not her breed, she was just that way. She was also blind. Poor thing. She started out as just a normal little kitten who we had gotten quite attached to. She was so cute and fluffy. She always played with us and would hide in certain places where we always knew we could find her. It was like a game. One morning I got out of bed and went in the living room to talk to my mother. I was sitting there in the lazy boy rocking chair rocking back and forth for about half an hour when my mother asked if I had seen Peepo. I said no, and continued rocking. When it finally dawned on me to look under the chair (that was one of her favorite hiding spots) I lifted the chair up from the back and to my dismay, there was my little kitten. Crushed. Dead. Now, this lazy boy chair had been broken for some time. A spring had broken out of the bottom and when you would rock in the chair, the spring would push into the carpet. I wasn't even fat then. I was only about 12 years old. Apparently, Peepo was laying right underneath the broken spring and the spring crushed her. And I just sat there for ½ and hour continuously crushing her. I felt so horrible. She was so badly hurt that some of her body parts (insides) came out a little. I know this is gross, but I want you to hear the WHOLE story.

So, here we are. Me balling hysterically cause I just killed my cute, furry little friend, my poor tiny kitten laying helplessly dead on the floor and not knowing what to do, when all of the sudden, my mom....(she's a faithFUL one) swoops up this kitten, tells it, "You will not die!" and starts speaking in tongues and then yes, just like the rescuer for drowning victim, renders it CPR. She breathed into the kitten's mouth. And what do you know? The dang thing came back to life. Talk about having nine lives. At first we thought that she would eventually die anyways. Give it a couple days or so. But she lived on for about 6 years. Yes, 6 years. She never grew bigger than the size she was when she got crushed. Something about the accident did something to her body to cause her not to grow. Not quite sure what. She was pretty normal for the first four years and then her health starting declining. She became blind and couldn't even see to eat her food. We started hand feeding her and just taking really good care of her. We knew she wasn't comfortable after a while, it started to show, but we just couldn't bear to put her down. I mean, she was our little miracle kitten. She must have been dead for at least 10 minutes. That's nuts. Anyhow, we ended up moving to Applegate and it's ver cold there. I think she just gave up. She died up there in Applegate and is buried in the front yard on Crother Road. I still feel terribly guilty about the whole thing. But it was a total accident. I just wished I wasn't the one who did it. Anyhow....

That's all I have to say about that.

JAKE

Well, since we are talking about birds, I thought I would pay tribute to my dearly departed parrot, One-Eyed Jake. Jake was a big bird. He was a good bird. And yes, he had only one eye. You see, apparently the owners before us weren't very nice to Mr. Jake and Jake tried to pay them back one day by latching his humongous beak onto his owner's finger. Now you can imagine how that probably doesn't feel too nice, so his former owner, sadly, beat Jake in the head with a stick to get him to release his grip. The blows to his head caused his eye to sink into the socket, lost forever. Technicially his eye was there, but you'd have to look really closely and there was definitely no way the bird could see out of it. Anyhow, besides the fact that he was strangly disfigured, Jake was a good bird. He would talk and sing and laugh and make kissy noises. Now, his second owners, according to my step dad who retrieved him from the second owners weren't the best people and they taught him a lot of foul language. So Jake would, from time to time, shout curses or nasty phrases. But he was still a good bird, just mislead in a sense. I liked him most of the time, but there were those times when he scared the crap out of me. It's almost as if he knew I secretely feared him. One day, when no one was home and it was dark outside, I heard a small, quite raspy voice say, "Hey Natalie.....Natalie......come here Natalie." I totally freaked out. Especially when I realized it was Jake. I responded with a "Shoosh, Jake. Close your beak." But he continued on....and in a freaky tone, too. He didn't even sound like a bird. "Come here Natalie.....come closer.....I won't bite......come here......." It totally freaked me out. And he just kept going saying he was a good bird and he wouldn't bite me and for me to come closer. He kept calling my name. Anyhow, I was totally freaked out. I mean, had he done it in a regular bird-like tone, it would have been fine, but his voice like dropped and it sounded quite human. Very scary. Anyhow, Jake did that quite often when no one was home. He did it to my mom a couple times too. Our little possessed bird.

Anyhow, Jake is no longer with us. This is quite sad because, despite the scary events, Jake was a good bird, always singing, talking, greeting you when you walked in the door. He loved taking showers and he would even be loose around the house for a couple hours once a week. I remember that if you put a blanket over him, he would say, "Kelly girl, oh Kelly girl....come here....gimme a kiss...." Apparently someone was named Kelly before us. Anyhow, one day my mom was cookin' something on the stove when she got an emergency call and had to leave the house. Unfortunately she forgot to turn the burner off. Luckily, the house did not catch fire, but it filled with smoke. My mother realized what she had done and rushed home to find the house full of grey colored smoke. She opened the windows, turned on all the fans, trying to air it out as best as possible. She heard Jake making coughing noises, but she just didn't put two and two together. Jake died later that day from massive smoke inhalation. My mother still feels guilty about the whole thing. But it's ok. I'm sure Jake is having a great time, with two eyes, talking dirty to the angels in heaven. =)

Anyhow, that was a long story, but I felt like it needed to be told. Oh, and for my mom's birthday I bought her a new bird. Her first bird since Jake. His name is "Little Bird." He is a parakeet. Since then, my step-dad bought Little Bird a friend; Whitey. They like eachother.

That's all.