The parakeet Toby died unexpectedly last night. He hadn’t seemed quite himself lately, but he had also been moulting, so I attributed his lethargy to this cyclical loss of feathers. He had only been with us three and a half years, so I wasn’t prepared to lose him.

I’ve tried to “loss-proof” pet ownership by always having two parakeets. The theory is that they have each other and we have two, so we don’t lavish our attention on one or the other. This hasn’t worked, of course. Because each of these tiny creatures has a personality. Each is a unique being that has never been before and will never be again. If that’s true of the domestic birds in my care, then it’s also true of the wild birds, the sparrows and cardinals and wrens and woodpeckers. It’s true of the deer, fox and squirrels. It’s probably even true of crickets and spiders — but I don’t want to carry this too far.

Toby was a sweetheart. He was patient and kind. He sang his heart out. He withstood an undue amount of abuse from his cage mate, Cleo. His one fault, which may have been a fatal one, was his fondness for seed. He was a portly fellow.

I never planned to write much about animals in this blog. I would describe the walks I took, the thoughts I had while taking them. No silly pet posts. Lofty notions only. But animals are part of the natural world, and the animals we take into our homes become a part of us. I could do worse, much worse, than to write about the least among us.