My Budgie Escaped!

Woken by My Mother’s Voice

It was July, before university started, so I had been getting up lazily around eight or nine in the morning.

But on the 29th I was woken by my mother’s voice. The faint hum of a vacuum, the calling voice of the budgie, the sound of a door opening, and then my mother’s startled “ah.”

When I went to her, she suddenly said, “It got away.” I had a vague idea from the “ah” she made the moment she opened the door, but I asked what had escaped. “Pii-chan escaped,” she said.

I asked, Where did it fly off to? but she didn’t know. Apparently she noticed a cardboard box while cleaning and went to throw it out, and the budgie flew away.

Running

I asked my mother if she at least knew the direction, and she pointed south, so I ran that way. It was a young bird only a few months old. Its flying ability would be poor, so I optimistically thought it would probably be somewhere nearby and played a budgie call video from my phone at maximum volume. I wondered if I was bothering the neighbors. But it might have been flying farther away, and I had to find it quickly.

The sun was strong, and I was fresh from bed and hadn’t even had water, so ten minutes of walking left me exhausted.

I decided to drink some water and search again, so I went back home.

My mother was quietly washing the cage with water. When I asked why she was washing it, she said she thought the budgie wouldn’t come back and that we should go buy another one. I didn’t want to believe she really thought that.

”Looking for a Budgie”

Sometimes I see flyers like that on utility poles and think, “Ah, it probably won’t be found,” but I never imagined I’d be putting one up myself.

However, for birds I felt posting on a pole was really ineffective. Birds can move hundreds of meters to kilometers, so I posted on an online bulletin board.

Why do I get so attached to a bird that was brought into the world for people’s convenience, altered by breeding to look like the sky in color and pattern? I wondered.

That said, I couldn’t cancel all my other plans for this bird. I had a shift at work, so I left the house.

On the way, I also consulted the local police box. “What did you lose?” “A budgie. A sky-blue budgerigar.” “Where did it escape from?” “From 自宅の住所 toward the south.” “We’ll file a lost property report.”

They said that and entered the information into their computer, even though the item was moving and its location unknown. They also told me that the police wouldn’t actively search and that all we could do was hope someone found it.

I tried not to think about it much that day. I was angry at my mother who said it probably wouldn’t be found, but at the same time it felt like the truth. The bulletin board was full of pet photos and posts from people searching for a year or two, and I felt the sadness of suddenly losing something important.

After a day passed with no sign of it, I thought it was probably hopeless. In Tokyo at the end of July, when even people can die from heatstroke, I couldn’t imagine that small, fluffy body surviving. It had been hand-raised since birth and didn’t know what was dangerous, so I couldn’t see how a bird that panicked the moment it went outside could survive.

The Phone Call

On the morning of July 30th, I was waking up slowly when my phone rang. It said “Metropolitan Police” on the screen, and for a second I wondered if I’d done something wrong, but then I remembered the lost property report from the day before. I thought it was unlikely it would be found so quickly, but since it had only been out a day it might still be alive and maybe someone had found it, so I answered.

It was a call from a nearby police station saying they had found a budgie matching the report and asking me to come and see it. I was overjoyed. I grabbed an insect cage big enough for the bird, got on my bicycle, and headed to the station.

When I entered the police station I could hear bird sounds. An officer who had come out to the front asked me to describe the bird’s features. When I showed a photo, he said to wait and went into a back room.

Then they told me to come and see because it looked the same.

Gwah

There in front of me was a sky-blue budgie. It was looking at me from the cage they’d prepared. “Pii-chan,” I said and ran over.

But at first glance something felt different. Its cere was blue, and its eyes had rings. The Pii-chan I knew had a pink cere and completely black eyes. It looked like an adult, or maybe a little older, not a young bird.

When they asked, “Is it the same?” I couldn’t say for sure. I thought it might be different, but I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe its color had changed somehow, so I looked its body over and compared it to the photo.

Little by little I noticed differences, like in a spot-the-difference game. The body markings were different and there were no signs of molting.

Then it cried out, “Gwaa—!” and I burst out laughing. Our Pii-chan’s call had been more like “piyoro.” With that voice it was clearly different. Could a budgie really make that sound?

I told the officer it wasn’t the same, and he asked me to check again. Apparently I was the closest among those who had filed a lost property report. Looking around, there was no one else who had come to check; maybe I was the only person who’d come.

I still had plans that day, so I eventually gave up and left.

Get a New One?

I thought that the real owner might not yet have filed a report, and the fact that a nearby police station already had such a similar-looking bird suggested there were many lost birds around. While I prayed the real owner would be found, my spirits grew cloudier.

When I got home, my mother asked, “Shall we get a new one?” I felt like saying, “You were the one who let it escape,” but I also thought maybe she said that because she was lonely.

An Email

The morning of July 31st was quiet. It felt strange—oh right, there’s no budgie anymore.

As I left the house and stared at my phone on the train, an email arrived: “There was a post on the bulletin board.”

The message said someone nearby had found a budgie matching the description and included 電話番号. I wasn’t particularly surprised—budgie owners are common and it might not be the same one.

Still, you don’t know until you check, so I contacted my mother at home and had her meet the person to confirm.

The Found Budgie

A few hours later I received a reply: it turned out the budgie was our Pii-chan. I was stunned. I could hardly believe it and worried that my mother might have mixed it up with another bird, but when she sent photos it was definitely Pii-chan. It looked thin and a bit dirty.

Apparently a resident of a nearby apartment had rescued it. “Nearby” was about 500 meters away, so it must have flown quite a distance.

As soon as it got home it went straight into its cage and started gobbling food; it must have been starving. I had heard it would be harsh for a bird to go a day without food or water, so it probably drank from puddles or pecked at leaves to get by.

According to the rescuer, they found it perched on the stair railing near the garbage area when they went to throw things away. It landed on their shoulder and wouldn’t leave. We don’t know how it ended up at the garbage area, but since it didn’t seem to dislike people, that may have saved its life.

Welcome Back

When I hurried home after hearing the news, Pii-chan was indeed there. I used to think all budgies looked the same, but when you own one you can tell them apart, which surprised me. It sat quietly in the corner of the cage, not calling as usual, just looking at me.

…So that was the story of how my miraculously escaped budgie was found. As for how unwell it seemed, after a few weeks back home it recovered a lot and returned completely to normal.