His name was Peter.
Peter was a finch,
a green, singing finch.
Chuck had bought him in Wenatchee, and he spent many years with us in our house in Seattle before Chuck decided to move to Mexico and I got custody of him, me being the stable one with a new house where he lived, happily, to the the day when the house was sold and we were packing the the rental truck with all my paraphernalia, waiting to the last minute to move Peter, still residing in his bamboo pagoda cage.
And when I moved the cage the bottom fell out and Peter, all flustered, escaped, and was chased by Arnold my Schnauzer who finally got a chance to get a hold of this fluttering bit of feathers and...since by then Peter was well beyond fifteen years, he had a heart attack and died right there.
We buried him in the garden of the house where he had been so very happy and took off to California, much like the family in The Grapes Of Wrath.
So often I wonder about this little bird who kept on singing for so many years and who never made it to California; was he happy, or was he lamenting his fate, stuck in a bamboo pagoda cage with no company except for humans and dogs.
And so he died, and I will never know.
R.I.P.