Late last year when my girlfriend came home with a box and Hank the budgie popped out, I was more than a little nervous.

Small things that flap around and move erratically irk me but after getting used to him and his antics, Hank became a welcome addition to my daily writing routine.

Perched on my shoulder for most of the day seeing over my daily writing efforts (when he wasn’t nipping my ear because I wasn’t paying attention to him, or bullying the other animals of the house around), I’d become quite familiar and attached to Hank.

Sadly, a few weeks ago we came home after a day-long riding outing only to return and find Hank dead.

My girlfriend had just had a shower and was drying her hair in the bedroom. I can’t remember exactly why but I’d gone into the bedroom and in one of those weird moments it struck me that Hank wasn’t making his usual ‘HEY GUYS, YOU LEFT ME IN HERE ALL DAY OMG LET ME OUT ALREADY’ ruckus.

Looking at his cage my heart sunk when I couldn’t see him, and walking closer I already knew something was wrong and as the floor of the cage entered my visual horizon – it became apparent Hank was on the floor of his cage on his side with his eyes closed.

I’m not sure when he died or exactly why, but I think it might have had something to do with his food. We initially thought maybe it was stress from Chinese New Year fireworks but they’d never really seemed to bother him too much so it was a weak theory.

Hank’s food had been changed earlier that week to another brand (the cheap emergency food my girlfriend had brought Hank home with had run out), and I’m thinking it was that.

Cloud (our cat) had long since given up annoying Hank and he didn’t appear to be injured, nor had the cage moved or disturbed (that and it’s out of Cloud’s reach) so short of it having something to do with the food, I’m at a loss to explain what happened.

Found in a park in Ximen, I guess one of the drawbacks of taking in stray or abandoned animals is that you never really know their history or what they went through before you found them.

I’d like to think in the months we had Hank we gave him a good run. We buried Hank the next day in a garden at the foot of the mountains leading up to Linkou Township, just west of Taipei.

I’m kind of missing his daily antics and pint-sized dominant personality around the house…

The above photo was taken a few weeks before he died, after I’d just installed a nice new shiny toy for him to bite and play with.

Naturally of far more interest than the toy itself was the twine and tape I’d used to fasten the toy to his cage, so Hank spent the next few hours defending his cage from the large wooden invader I’d introduced into “his” territory.

Eventually he got over it and learnt to ring the bell when he wanted attention (“I DEMAND YOU LET ME OUT NOW!”) or furiously flap his wings to assert his dominance over the inanimate cubes of wood he also liked to gnaw on.

With Hank’s cage now empty the thought of getting another budgie has crossed my mind, although I probably should read up some more on budgie care if I’m going to try to bring a new baby budgie into the house.

I do miss Hank but part of me is kind of relieved my there’s not a constant supply of bird dropping being deposited all around my work area… that and his sudden death has left me a bit wary about how quickly you can lose a feathered friend.

Not to mention the complete lack of pet care that seems to exist for birds in Taiwan. Our regular vet doesn’t do birds, nor know of where to get them checked up.

In any case, here’s to you Hank – I hope you’re flying free.


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1. Meet Hank, the Taiwanese budgie.