Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, Pt. 2

We decided to wait a bit to introduce Fluffy to Mozart. At every opportunity though, once she heard him squawk from upstairs, she tried to run or fly upstairs. So we brought his cage downstairs and set them up in neighboring cages. Mozart had been accustomed to snuggling at night with his 'girlfriend' which was actually a large dog toy that oddly resembled a large parrot. Fluffy quickly became jealous of this girlfriend and attacked it one evening severing the rope from which it hung and throwing it to the ground. She would hop back and forth from cage to cage shrieking and leaping like a huge bullfrog. We had never seen a bird hop so far and so high and thought she truly seemed to be a pink velosa raptor.

Mozart was an unwilling suitor. He tried to ignore Fluffy, tried to just sit there and do nothing. But she would have none of it. She began trying to make a nest in the newspapers of her cage so we got her a nestbox made from a half of a large whiskey barrel which we sanded and painted pink for her. Turned upside down in her cage, it seemed ideal. She started laying eggs right away. Much of their relationship was hidden from us but we would eventually catch glimpses of them preening and cuddling each other. Winter evenings that year spent in the living room watching TV or reading were shared with two very large, very pink birds very much in love. Mozart finally came out of his shell and became a loving mate to Fluffy.

But it was not to last. She was diagnosed with a fatal disease thought to be caused by a virus and lived only until that July, losing her battle on July 8, 1997. Her desperate desire to have a mate, lay eggs, have chicks and raise them and her desperate battle to live would haunt me for many months, even years. The day after she died, that hot July afternoon, I found myself sitting on the front stoop looking at what had been her nestbox, now a flower box. We'd taken it away and put it outside and used it as a flower box when she had first gotten sick only a week earlier.

Above it in a hanging flower pot hung the dead remains of a pink impatien plant which was now a year and a half old. A second glance showed me that this flower, meant to only last one season, had suddenly come to life and had one tiny pink flower in full bloom! This impatien was one and a half years old and had lain dead since the harsh winter! Now it was blooming!

I knew it was her soul re-animating the flesh of this flower! I brought the flower pot inside and hung it in the bedroom near Mozart's cage. A knowing, wise look from him was all I needed to be sure of this miracle. Later I told my husband, Christian, about it. He nodded sadly.

Then on the anniversary of her death the following year, the same impatien, having lain dead all winter, bloomed fully again! I was still grieving heavily for Fluffy, tears would well up in my eyes and my heart would seem to squeeze and tighten at the thought of the injustice of her life, waiting 13 years to finally find happiness and to only have it for a few short months. I lay in bed one night sleepless as usual, and rolled over to see Mozart standing on the edge of his cage, in the dark he seemed to glow as he looked down at me with a loving cockatoo smile on his face. Then he turned and walked across the cage and sat next to...himself! Mozart was already over on the other side of the cage! "Mozart!" I called out, "is that Fluffy?" "Yea yea!" he said in his little high pitched voice, "she's here right now!"

to be continued tomorrow...

(pictured: Mozart sits atop his cage with the spectral Fluffy and her chicks flying above and to the right of him)