Strange day for me yesterday. I woke up around 6-ish and played on the computer for awhile. About an hour later my son and then my husband came upstairs too. The birds were awake so Aaron took the blanket off their cages and everyone went about their own thing. I came in for a cup of coffee and took a cursory glance at them. Something felt wrong. I walked over to our cocktiels' cage and realized immediately that my bird April had died in the night. I opened the cage and gently picked her up, and then went looking for something I could wrap her in. I at least made it out of the house with a shovel and the bird before I started crying hard. So I went out back in the yard, cried a lot while I dug a burial spot for her and finally wished her peace and farewell. By then it was starting to rain.

When I came back up my son was extremely upset and crying too. April may have just been a cockatiel, but she was the sweetest bird I've ever met; not a mean bone in her anywhere. Sadly Zachary had bonded with her quite a bit because she was the most gentle of our birds.It was so hard watching him struggle with losing April, I would've given anything I could if it would have taken away his pain. 🙁

Her cage mate Zeke was a nervous wreck after I removed her from it. He called and sang, hoping she'd answer back – but of course she couldn't. I spent some time with him today to try to console him some. Up until now he's never lived in a cage by himself, and he had a very hard time with that last night. My Mom is trying to convince me to get him a new mate, but we don't want another animal. We (Aaron and I) are currently at3 birds, 3 cats, 1 dog, 1 bunny, 2 small fishtanks and 2 betta bowls with bettas. Maybe later on when we've moved into our own home I'll look for a mate for him; but for now he's got the other 2 birds (1 parrotlet and 1 conure) keeping him companyfrom their own cages.

The only good news in all of this was I know that she died in her sleep. That's why no one was suspicious earlier in the morning ~ she was in a sleeping position on the floor of the cage, whereshe usually slept.

The rest of the day was crazy. We went to town to run some errands and then drove home again.We then decided that we would celebrate Zachary's birthday yesterday,(even though it's today) because it would take his mind off of losing April somewhat.I took a nap, told my Momthe news, and then we headed for town again to meetup with some friends to go to a pizza/arcade placethat Zach had pickedout for his special day. He also got to open hisbig gift yesterday afternoon ~ an androidtablet that he could download all of his games onand play games on the webwith. I don't normally gofor something expensive like that, but I found a deal that just couldn't be beat so I went ahead an bought it forhim.

So we went to the pizza/arcade and ate dinner and let the kids run around and play, then we headed for Steak N Shake for desserts. I love those kids (my friend Michelle's 2children)but when you put the 3 of them in a room togetheryou end up going deaf. So what do we do? We load them up with MORE sugarof course!(smacking forehead) .

Afterwards we headed home for some down time. Zachary played on his tablet, Aaron watched a basketball game, and I sat on the porch and talked with my Mom. Turns out that I wasn't the only family member to lose a pet. My aunt had called to tell my Mom about what happened. She had a pet llama namad Topaz and a miniature horse named Cookie and several dogs and cats. But anyhow, Topaz started acting poorly a few days ago, but today when my aunt came down to his stall he couldn't get up, but he kept trying so they had to tie him down to keep him from hurting himself anymore. Linda (my aunt) got in the stall with him and tried to calm him, holding his head in her lap and stroking him and talking to him for almost 3 hours. The vet came finally and he told Linda that there was nothing he could do for Topaz to save his life because whatever it was was neurological. The poor llama just screamed and screamed in agony, so she let the vet sedate him and put him down. That was bad enough but then the real kicker came ~ the vet had to cut off his head because he thought Topaz had been rabid. He had bit one of the neighors that morning and had spiton my Aunt's hand, so if the vet's theory proved correct, both she and the neighbor would have to go to the hospital to start getting shots right away. My aunt had an open cut on her hand that saliva had possibly gotten into. The sad thing is that if Topaz had actually been HERS, instead of the neighbor's, he would have gotten his rabies vaccination. The neighbor had allowed my aunt to take both Cookie and Topaz and they split the cost of feed half and half. If my aunt hadn't been so adamant with this neighbor about calling the vet Topaz would have been capable of biting and spitting on people and other animals, spreading the disease and leaving this poor llama to die in agony. What's scary now is that if Topaz had rabies, will Cookie (the miniature horse) have it too? They shared the same field, played together, ate together, etc… and didn't haveher shot either.

Today was a bad day to be an animal. :"-(