Birds in Heaven

Spaghetti died today. Spaghetti was a love bird, and followed her lover into the ground three months after her former lover left this earth. Or really the cage. Since Meatballs is in the earth. And, if the Lion King is to be believed, he is now part of the earth.

In the hours before Spaghetti's death, she laid a single egg. The egg was cracked, and poorly formed. Since Meatballs was dead and we had not frozen any of his bird sperm to impregnate Spaghetti with at a later date, it was a surprise to see the egg. At first I claimed to be the father, but have now denied having a sexual relationship with Spaghetti.

At Meatballs' funeral, which I officiated, I spoke of the love between Meatball and Spaghetti, and how sad the remaining one would be. I joked about how we were sad to bury Spaghetti or Meatballs, not knowing which one was which. The remark generated a ripple of laughter amongst my children, and when I went to speak today shortly before we put dirt over Spaghetti's box, I was asked not to make any jokes.

So I tried not to. Even though the bird was dead.

I did keep referring to Spaghetti as He, when clearly Meatballs was the He in the relationship, and with the arrival of today's egg, it was confirmed that Spaghetti was in fact the surviving bird.

We considered freezing the cracked egg. Who knows, one day, when Cryogenics moves into a more developed stage, Spaghetti's spawn could rejoin us, but since the egg was misshapen and cracked as it was, we did not want to risk freezing a bird and then thawing it out and hatching it and finding out that it was physically or mentally damaged.

So now are birds are flying in heaven. Making noise. And loving death without a cage.