Carter's Memorial Stone

April 16, 2024

My wife, Sandy, and son, Stefan, have severe allergies so we were unable to have a pet. That all changed one day in 1979, when we lived in Edmonton and were walking through the Woolco Depart­ment store. Sandy always had to visit the pet section. We happened to walk through the bird section and passed a cage full of budgies. I did a little bird whistle through my teeth and they all scattered except for one who came to the edge of the cage and answered me. This little green bird and I carried on quite a conversation and Sandy said we have to take him home. The little fellow had picked us and soon we had invested $7.00 in a pet and another $50 in a cage, accessories, birdseed and a book on Budgie care. Stefan carried him home in a little box and named him Carter after a friend from pre-school.

It is hard to believe that a little two-ounce ball of feathers could have so much personality but Carter and I bonded from the start. In no time he was trained to sit on my finger and he would fly to me when I snapped my fingers. We had long whistling conversations and he learned a few words. His cage sat on top of the fridge in the kitchen and we hung a trapeze in front of a kitchen window over the sink. Carter had the run of the house and would follow us upstairs. His favorite roost was sitting on my shoulder. We lived in a Costain-built house in South­east Ed­mon­ton, which had a large two-story window in the living room. There was a tall indoor tree in front of the window. Carter sat in the tree and watched the action on the street. When I came home on the bus, he sensed that I was approaching when I was still a block away and would raise a fuss. For some reason he never tried to escape out the door when someone came in.

He was absolutely enamored with me and would make pin-wheel eyes and cuddle against my cheek.

Carter would join us for breakfast and always enjoyed bit of egg white from Sandy's boiled egg.

One of his favorite sports was to push things off shelves to hear them hit the floor. We had fridge magnets that we would line up along the top of the fridge and he would flip them off. This developed into a game of catch with my son who would try to catch them before they hit the floor. The bird would cagily look away and when Stefan took his eye off him, he would flip the magnet. Stefan kept score for the ones he caught or missed, one point for himself for a catch and a point for Carter if the magnet hit the floor. Dr. Don Heth, a neighbour, who was an animal behavior psychologist at the University of Alberta, was astounded that the bird seemed to take part in a game of catch.

We moved back East in 1983, driving the "Blue-car", our 1975 Mav­er­ick, back home. Carter's cage was in the back seat but he traveled most of the way on my shoulder. One startled gas station attendant said, "Did you know there's a bird on your shoulder?"

Carter again had the run of our new house in Ottawa, with his fridge-top base, tra­peze over the sink and freedom to follow us upstairs. Sandy had a display of her col­lect­able glass in a kitchen window and after Carter had pushed a ruby glass off, she had to glue the smaller pieces down. We thought we had lost him when we found him head-down in a tall glass, but he recovered.

One day he developed a huge swelling on his bottom and we assumed it was a tumor and prepared for the worst. The next day there was a second large swelling on his bottom making him look like a penguin. It was off to the vet to investigate where the three of us sat, sad-faced, in the waiting room with Carter in his cage on Sandy's lap. The vet took one look at him and said "This bird is egg-bound"

Carter was a she!

So, with the help of the vet, two eggs were coaxed out and the new mother spent the night in the maternity ward where she received a birth control injection to stop the egg-laying process.

The vet said that at about age six, budgies will start laying eggs. They try to lay five or six before stopping. One trick to get them to stop is to put some white marbles on the bottom of the cage and when mom does her inventory, the urge to lay more will stop.

The vet cut open one egg to make sure it was healthy and gave us the other to take home, along with a bill for $49.00.

That was the only egg laying episode and we decided not to change her name. However, I was now more comfortable with my love affair with this bird. She loved going to the cottage with us and had a special place in a tree with a view of the lake. The freedom to fly kept her healthy and she survived for fourteen years. Her only serious medical issue occurred when she was in her final year, when she suffered a minor stroke. One foot remained curled and she lost the ability to fly so we had to manually move her to her perch over the sink and back to her cage at night.

When she finally passed away one February morning, we knew that we had to bury her at the lake. Stefan donated a little metal pirate chest for a coffin and we kept her in cold storage in the garage until we could get out to the cottage. About two months later we were able to access the cottage but the ground was still frozen. We picked a spot under a big spruce tree in front of the cottage and started digging a hole. I had to burn about a gallon of gas to soften the frozen ground as I scraped out a decent sized hole and, with a few words, we covered her up. Concerned that an animal might dig her up we looked for a stone to mark her grave.

The first owners of our cottage were Ken and Helen Hunt who had made a walkway with some poured concrete stones. One was marked "Ken and Helen." It solved our problem and became the headstone for our beloved Carter's final resting place on Sleepy Hollow Lane.