Maynard

I can remember as a child my parents were always looking for rare exotic birds for pets. I can recall the pair of cockatiel birds, parrots and my all time favorite was Maynard. We acquired Maynard from Rick down at aquatic Gardens where my dad would help out by working part-time. So sometimes for payment he would get birds my mother liked. My father would be the one Maynard began mimicking. Maynard was truly one of a kind bird. Maynard was a very beautiful jet black in color, very animated considering he had five people that he could mimic daily.

Maynard would answer the door anytime someone knocked, he would reply "nobody's home a**hole". We had Maynard during the time we was living in public housing since my dad was not able to work from a horrible accident, he was hit in the head with a sledgehammer helping my Uncle Don put in a new hot water tank. I can recall the one morning that we had an inspection, as the person who was doing the inspection knocked and of course Maynard answered his ever so famous comment.

So us girls would be greeted by Maynard every morning with "good morning", or "hello pretty girl". Maynard greeted everyone that came in the house. I can recall a lot of times he would repeat a lot of things us girls would say, which we would eventually get punished for saying. My older sisters eventually caught on to this, so they would never talk in front of Maynard. It did not bother me at all. I would just sit there and talk to Maynard, we would listen to music. I have always just enjoyed playing with Maynard.

Now after the accident with my father, he had filed for disability since he now had seizures from the injury. That is when my mother and father decided to move outta the apartment into a house that my grandfather had bought, we had been living in this house for several years, when My Aunt and her three kids needed a place to stay. I remember that my parents let them stay with us while my Aunt and her husband were getting divorced.

Inside this house there was the five of us, along with my Aunt and her three kids. It was seriously very crowded and my youngest cousin was horribly a bad kid. I can remember that my dad had a special spray bottle with water in it for Maynard, and occasionally we would mist him with water. Maynard very much enjoyed this, so my cousin would notice my father doing this for Maynard. One day I came home from school, everyone in the house is yelling and screaming at each other. I recall my father telling my Aunt that her son is a heathen. Then I can recall my father looking straight into my cousin's face and saying to him that he needed to get outta his face, if you was my kid I would beat you a** for killing my bird.

I was not absolutely sure which bird he was speaking about, at the time we had several. So when I did not hear the greeting from Maynard "hello, pretty girl". I knew at that moment, I dropped all my things and ran into the room where Maynard's cage was, I seen my bird just laying on the bottom of the cage, not moving. I just started balling uncontrollably. My father is attempting to calm me down, explaining to me that my cousin killed Maynard because he was attempting to spray Maynard, but unfortunately he use window cleaner instead of the water in the bottle next to his cage. My father had grabbed a box at that time, we put Maynard in the box. I added some special items in there with him so he wasn't lonely.We proceeded to bury Maynard. We had eventually moved outta that house over this incident.