So long, my feathered friend

Pepper, our family's bird died last week. He richly fulfilled his role as a pet.

Blogger's note: While Publius Wyoming is dedicated to liberal/progressive opinion, today's entry strays from the mission. My apologies to those who were looking for political inspiration. More will follow in ensuing days.

By D. Reed Eckhardt

The three-foot bird cage sits on my kitchen floor. It is deathly quiet. Nothing scrambling about, or pecking at food, or singing along with the radio. A friend of 25 years has passed on. He leaves an empty space in my heart and in our home.

Pepper was a cockatiel that I got for one of my daughters post-divorce in 1992 in Alexandria, Lousiana. It had been suggested by a friend that my girls should have

This is not our bird, Pepper, but he looked like this.

something to care for when they came to visit my apartment. So I got each of them a bird. Pepper was the only survivor in our home, even from a family that he and another cockatiel raised in the bottom of their cage. He hung around after my older daughters left, and he had given love and comfort to me, my wife and my youngest daughter over the years. He was a good friend.

That's the thing about pets: They provide us with great comfort. And they give us something to care for outside ourselves. Even as Pepper had been fading for the past several months, apparently from a stroke or something similar, he had provided great joy as I ground up seed for him in the morning, changed his water and kept a floor heater turned on for him at his cage for the warmth he seemed to need. He often struggled over to sit near me as I worked at the kitchen table. Each visit was one more with an old buddy.

Funny thing, though, is that Pepper didn't seem to really like me all that much. He saved his greatest affection for my wife and friends Jim and Mary, who often tended him when we were out of town. He would travel across the cage so they could stroke his head and neck feathers. But not me. It didn't matter. He could be a crotchety old man if he wanted and nip my fingers when I tried to touch him. It was all part of what he was.

At my age, 65, this is not the first pet that I have lost. But each has been special in its own way -- an iguana, dogs, cats -- and each has enriched my life and the lives of those around me. That's what pets do, and Pepper more than fulfilled that role.

I think, too, that pets remind us of our own mortality. A friend, Bradley Harrington, recently wrote in his column in the WTE about the loss of his family's dog, noting that "no one gets out alive." Indeed, and the death of Pepper reminds me of that. Just as this gray, white and yellow bird (with the orange spots on each side of his head) enhanced my life, it reminds me that it is important that I use my time to help make the lives of others better. So little time, so much to do, and see, and share. Perhaps I can be a Pepper to someone else, be it family, or friend, or passing acquaintance. That is a proper way to honor the death of a friend.

Pepper's other gift to me was music. He relished Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." He would sit on his perch and chirp, whistle and sing along. One evening I was playing the Traveling Wilburys, and one song -- I can't now remember which -- caught his fancy. We played it over and over, and he added his tones to the music. I also will think of him when I hear "Can't Touch This," by MC Hammer. Pepper would scoot from one end of his perch to the other as my daughter sang, "Doo doo doo, can't touch this!" Small joy, big smiles, immense pleasure.

Perhaps it is cynical, but for me, my life has been about saying goodbye. So long, my feathered friend. And thank you for what you have given me. I will treasure even this empty hole that you have left behind.

D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.