His name is Sid and he has a noble profile. When I saw a picture of him in yesterday’s paper I knew I had to meet him. Luckily, Tom agreed.  We briefly considered and then dismissed memories of the last time we’d done something like this.

It hasn’t really been so bad, I said.

What do you mean? Copper is a jerk.

This is just talk, of course. Tom loves Copper, rambunctious and ill-behaved though he is (Copper that is, not Tom).

So we jumped in the car and drove to the animal shelter, and there was Sid, noble profile and all. We knew right away he would be our little birdie.

What we didn’t know for a few minutes was that two cages away was another parakeet, a canary yellow bird with banded leg and of unknown gender (under “sex” the word “unknown” was crossed out and “male” scrawled above it, though the final paperwork said “female”), and that she would be coming home with us too. Her given name was “Taylor,” but we are trying “Dominique” on for size.

Both budgies were strays, so we figured they are scrappy and familiar with the world. And they (in the two cages they came in) are now perched on our kitchen counter, listening to Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony. They are still shy and quiet and getting to know each other through the bars of their  cages. We don’t expect them to be anything like our beloved Hermes, who’s been gone more than a year and a half now, and we don’t pretend to be their all or nothing (hence the pair). But they have already begun to fill our house with twitters and chirps. It’s good to have birds again.

This (obviously low-res!) shot of Sid is what got my attention. Look at that noble chin!