By Chris Churchill

We lost our little Jimmy.

Our little cockatiel.
She was the best little bird anybody could have ever had a deep and abiding friendship with.
Thirteen-and-a-half years with this little baby. She was our “Tiny Chicken.” We spoiled her like no bird has ever been spoiled.

Anyone who knows my wife and I, knows about our birds.

Back in January, 2007, Cathy and I had our first two birds, budgies, Charlie and Petey, at home and we weren’t in the market for another bird. (I should mention here that, if we were home, our birds were allowed to fly wherever they wanted and just be birds all day.)  But we still wanted to go to the Pet Land in Skokie (it’s a Jewel now) and look at birds. We promised we weren’t going to buy another bird.

Then we got to a little display with two cockatiels and we saw her. We stopped for a moment to marvel at how freaking adorable she was and then, almost as quickly, began to walk away. Then she called out to us. She let out a little “hoot” that became a major part of the soundtrack of our lives from that day forward.

Cathy couldn’t believe what she heard. It sounded like she was calling specifically to us. That’s what was so hard to believe. But she was.

“Was that her?” Cathy asked. It was. They immediately, right there in the store, became best buds. We named her Jim (you can’t tell most bird’s gender without a genetic test) because we thought it was funny to give such a happy little bird such a serious, businessman-sounding name. We put a deposit down and were going to come back later with the rest.

I remember getting a phone call shortly afterwards where my agent (back when I still aspired to be an actor) let me know I’d been let go from a paid series of television commercials. Any other day I would have though my “big break” was gone. Not this day. I didn’t care at all. Because we had Jim. We were already in love with this little bird.

The first few months with Jim were very special, very intimate. Cathy and I were both recovering from the worst year, physiologically, in each of our lives. Charlie and Petey had helped us a lot. We had fallen in love with them as well. And they were so much fun to watch and to interact with. But now they had each other and they loved to hang out together, doing their own thing. It was as if they had moved out on their own and would come over and visit their parents occasionally.

Jim was our new special little friend. She was always with us, on our finger, our shoulder, in our face.

I was finally coming back to my old self and, while Jim and I hit it off too, Jim knew that Cathy especially needed some extra affection. The two of them bonded so strongly during that time. Don’t get me wrong. I was in on the bonding almost as much but this new friendship was definitely something Cathy needed.

It was at this time that Cathy stated what has been a truth I was constantly reminded of over the years with our birds. “It is a privilege to be loved by a bird.” What she meant was, they are small, fragile, and they can fly away but when you have relationship with a bird, they trust you, they rely on you, and they love you, even though they don’t have to.

We were both so infatuated with her in those early days. She took car rides with us, basket rides down to the laundry room. Anywhere we wanted to go, we wanted her with us.

She didn’t like being away from us. And her happiness when we returned provided part of the soundtrack of the last thirteen years that I will always miss: up until just a few days ago, whenever I would arrive at my own front door and put the key in the lock—instantly—“HOOT-HOOT-HOOT-HOOT!” until I got inside and let her out of her cage to be with us again.

Jim became a favorite bird of anyone who visited with us too. I filmed an epic battle between a good friend and comedic actor, Chris Hauser and Jim. Her “Uncle Scooter” (Scott McNulty) loved her “peaches” and her “striped pants” and her “cape” all of which were parts of her God-given fanciness.

She smelled like oatmeal, too.

Imagine that.

Her human cousins (Cathy’s and my nieces) Gabrielle and Katrina and her Tante Marski and Uncle Bob had so many special times with her at holidays (when Cathy and I and the birds all stayed with them) and other times where they had occasion to visit with her. The girls and I had a whole TV show made up for Jim called Bill Justice: Justice of the Peace. We even made and recorded a theme song and filmed an episode once. Ridiculous and fun and beautiful to remember. Bill Justice’s weapon of choice was a Q-tip, which Jim wielded skillfully like a trained stunt bird, hooting as she imparted her own brand of cockatiel justice.

After Jim became part of our family, other birds have come (and, in some cases, gone) but Jim was always the Queen of the Flock. Even when George, our African Gray joined us (which initially scared Jim so much that we heard her hiss for the first time ever), or when Mac, our Blue Fronted Amazon joined us, Jim never accepted anything less than absolute respect of her position in this flock.

Anyone who has known Cathy and I during these years since we’ve become bird people understands who Jim was to us. She was the tiny alpha bird that ran this joint and if she wasn’t happy no one was. If she wasn’t satisfied, no one could be allowed to rest until she was. But when she was content and we were all together, it was the most peaceful, beautiful, loving feeling in our lives.

I can’t tell you how many times Cathy and I have drifted off in a mid day nap with Jim asleep on one of our heads, fluffed up, grinding her beak in contentment. There was no better feeling. If you’ve never had the privilege of having a content bird grind their beak while sitting on you, you’re missing out. (It’s like a cat purring, for a comparison.)

Jim was hilarious, too. Knocking stuff off tables and staring at it to make sure it stayed down. Walking through your food. She once climbed right down into a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch I was eating. She was up to her waste in milk. I couldn’t help but laugh. I also finished that bowl of cereal. She also wasn’t scared of anyone. It was as if she had no idea she was 8 inches head to tail. She knew that being Jim was enough. She knew she was entitled to everything because she was Jim. Cathy and I used to joke that her little warning hoot was Jim language for “I’m JIM, goddamn it!” And we knew what that meant. Jim was going to do what she wanted and everyone else would just have to deal with it.

One of my favorite things about Jim was that she always, answered when I called her name. It was as if I was being let in to the club. More importantly, it was as if I was being allowed in to the minds of birds. I’d call her name, and she’d hoot to let me know where she was. Often, she would do a fly-by to get my attention, then hoot until I turned to see where she was and where she was going. She wanted to know that I knew where she was.

She loved to eat food out of Georgie’s cage. She loved to sit on the TV and on my computer monitor. Chances are that during this current pandemic, if I’ve Zoomed with you, you’ve seen Jim streak by or you’ve seen me talking to her off camera assuring her that she was alright because she was hooting about something. You may have even seen her little cockatiel toes hanging over the computer’s camera, blocking the camera as she sat, satisfied, on top of the monitor.

During this lockdown period, she grew very tired of my time on my phone. She would walk over and attack the phone, then stand waiting for me to rub her head. Cathy and I loved giving Jim whatever she wanted. Head scratches, treats, a thousand tiny bites off of our sandwiches, anything.

It hit me yesterday, a full two days after she died, that the thing I’ll miss most is the anticipation of her presence. Whenever I wanted to do anything in the apartment, I had to first consider how Jim was doing, would she take kindly to my new course of action, was she safe, did she want to come with me? Should I leave the door open so she could come and go? Should I stop what I’m doing to make sure she’s okay? The most visceral version of this anticipation is how she used her physical presence to communicate with me. When I walked into a room, she would zoom by me and then back to where she was, so I would know where she was. Or she would just land on you as if to say, “Hey. I remember you! You’re the best!” The constant anticipation of being buzzed by a bird may seem like a nightmare to some of you birdphobics out there, but to me, it was part of why I was happy and alert in my day to day. She energized and encouraged me just by being herself, a bird, with simple wants and needs and who demanded that she receive them. 

There were close calls with her health many times over the years but she always bounced back. And as she got older, I fell victim to a false sense of security about her health and the amount of time that we might have her. I remember reading about how cockatiels might live to be twenty-five years old. But when Jim died the other day, suddenly I was only seeing ten to fifteen years as a life expectancy. Maybe that’s just me trying to make myself feel better but it is nice to think she lived a full happy life.

I could go through every single detail of Jim’s tiny, powerful, love-filled life but this piece is already too long. And it doesn’t matter to you as much as it does to me. I just happen to have the privilege of being a pretty good writer so I get to write these indulgent pieces from time to time.

The point is that she had been slowing down of late. Her flying seemed less fancy, and when she landed on me, I often felt like she was going to fall off. This is not normal for a bird. It wasn’t normal for Jim. And I only knew that because I knew Jim. Even Georgie seemed to be warning us that Jimmy might not be around much longer. Georgie would make the sound of our late lovebird Zorro, the first of our birds to die, followed by a downward glissando, a sort of cartoony representation of something falling that George had figured out how to do years ago. This was because, like Zorro, almost ten years ago, Jimmy was losing her strength and her balance. She was getting older.

Last Saturday she started slowing down even more, becoming more quiet. Sunday morning she was bad enough that we took her to the emergency vet. They did what they could, sent us home with medicine but I’m not sure what they could have done. I think she was just old. Or at least old enough that she couldn’t fight off this last illness.

We spent the rest of Sunday in bed, loving her, rubbing her feathers, telling her how much we loved her. We cried all day even though she was still sitting right there with us. It’s just that we kind of knew what was happening and we couldn’t believe it. Then, in the afternoon, she seemed to rally. She got hungry, flew around a bit, hooted a few times for her buddy, Georgie.

She hid somewhere and I called her name and she answered back a few times so I’d know where she was. I climbed up onto a stepladder to see where she was, huddled up against the wall above the cupboards. I got her down and we spent the rest of the night together. Even though she didn’t keep her medicine down, we were still optimistic after her rally (even though we had seen our budgie, Aiko do the same thing before he died, years ago).

We put her in her cage to go to sleep for the night. I checked on her three hours later and she seemed fine. She was still on her perch and she responded when I called her name. But in the morning when it was time to give her her medicine, she was gone. Laying at the bottom of her cage.

End of an era.

End of an epic friendship and love affair between a married couple and their beloved Tiny Chicken. Ol’ Jim. Rock-o-tiel Cock-o-tiel. Tiny. Or just plain Jim.

The way Jim used to respond to us always made us laugh because it was if she had decided that she needed to remind us, “I’m JIM!”

Yes she was. There will never be another Jim.