On Art, Fences, & Death - An Interlude

Caution: Anthropomorphism and cuteness ahead, followed by angst. Read at own risk.

As a few of you may know, the irreplaceable and infinitely adorable Ixie has recently been having some serious health issues, and passed away this week. This personable creature that many have gotten to know and fall in love with had more character than the space she occupied would seem to suggest. (Really, she was just so damn cute, what can I say?!) She's been with me for some of the most meaningful years of my life, and it will be strange not to have her around any longer.

i can haz bathtub? no? i uze drinking bowl! look at mah mowhawk!

Ixie, short for Ixiona, adapted from Ixion, father of the Centaur race in Greek mythology, was a two-and-a-half-year-old budgerigar. When she reached reproductive maturity, she became pretty much a curious, clever, and overly affectionate egg-laying machine. If she was a chicken, we would have been happy to have breakfast every day, but her eggs were rather on the small side.

the hell is this?! *kick* ...ya! football!

A frisky budgie is adorable to witness. Because she was very tame, she craved human companionship, begged for kisses, and wanted to spend all day on your shoulder. But her egg laying started becoming abnormally frequent and I worried for her health. She continued to lay eggs, until it eventually became problematic. She had her first abdominal peritonitis in January of this year, and, following treatment with antibiotics, it seemed to have been resolved. However, this summer, her belly started to bulge again, indicating a more serious problem of egg retention. After countless vet visits, some X-rays showing multiple eggs in her abdomen, more medication, hormone treatment...it just kept growing.

For the past couple of months, we were just faced with difficult decisions. Surgery? Euthanasia? Long-term treatment? The veterinarians (who knew her all too well by then) never explicitly told us what to do either way, probably at least in part for liability reasons, and so the decisions have always rested upon us. Only during the last visit was euthanasia strongly encouraged; the size of her abdomen was beyond any case they've seen before and the chances of the eggs being reabsorbed eventually by the body (as sometimes happens) were rather, well...stupid...for her state.

During this whole ordeal, Ixie had kept most of her vivaciousness and personality, but in the past few days even her enthusiasm was decreasing, which is a sign for most small prey animals that it's probably too late. We put in a homemade nest box for her, but the chances of her eliminating the eggs were very slim. At least she was able to use the box as a hideout for her final days, and have some of the comfort of being at home with familiar sounds and voices.

***

This episode has definitely had me reflecting on a lot of things. The moral, emotional, and financial value of pet ownership, the extent of responsibility, humans' tendency to be allergic to suffering, how to deal with a guilty conscience, experiences of all sorts that I miss or crave and that I can't have (especially the ones that I will never have again)...

The hardest part was being on the fence; not knowing what decisions to take, not knowing how things would turn out. I felt, even though I knew we had done our best for the little chick, that I couldn't choose euthanasia. I don't like seeing suffering, but that is something I feel, and I didn't think it was reasonable to take a decision about a life based on my aversion to suffering. I don't know what Ixie would have wanted (or even if she had any awareness of life and death at all, as a topic for a drawn out philosophical discussion that I hope to avoid here), or what "suffering" pets in general may "want", but I feel that we often think for them in terms of human thoughts, needs, and emotions.

So we chose the path of prolonging our stress, and living in that uncertain middle ground, on the fence, where things can go either way from one day to the next. Not only did her state change constantly, but how we felt changed just as often, and our decision compass was also wildly oscillating. Lots of questions, lots of uncertainty. Maybe I have been thinking too deeply about a little parakeet? But she was incredibly dear to me, and I wanted to feel later that I've made the best decisions, ie. the decisions I would be least likely to regret.

I really dislike these sort of "on the fence" situations. In the past, I haven't been able to stay on the fence for very long before jumping off on one side. The instability of being up there ends up swallowing most of my mental energy and makes me incredibly uneasy. I find that a lot of people have trouble with these situations; the uncertainty of a situation can be far worse than its resolution. Sometimes, even having a bad outcome can at least provide closure and allow one to move on. Hence, one might often arbitrarily choose a direction, just to be done with it, just because the uncertainty of straddling the fence can become too unbearable.

Having quite a few fences to dance on in my life currently, I'm trying to improve my balancing act. I think it is best, in the long-run, to try to find calm even when on the fence, rather than force an outcome. There will always be fence situations; things rarely get resolved from one day to the next. Maybe I can make myself cozy while I'm up there, enjoy the breeze and the view, and forget, for a while, that the stable grounds are actually far below.

 ***

There's just something so quaint about it!

It has been a year of cases fitting in the "bad news brings good news brings..." category. But this and other incidents have brought me considerably closer to living the carpe diem motto, not just as a smart-sounding, stereotyped pat on the shoulder that people throw around, but truly trying to throw myself in it every chance I get. I've been more motivated than I ever have to actually overcome fears, reach for what I want, and stop putting it off (like the hitchhiking trip!). And for this I am thankful.

Although, at the same time, that's all nice and everything, but I'm still feeling like shit right now... As stoic as I may try to be, I do enjoy the occasional stroll through Kübler-Ross, in reverse; after understanding and acceptance, I deal with anger.