I remember as a kid, lying on my back in the meadow, watching a hawk circle slowly in the sky until, spotting a field mouse, it would dive lightening fast into the tall grass and reappear seconds later with its prey imprisoned in its deadly talons.

But birds and cages, so far as I was concerned were mutually exclusive. At least, that's the way I saw it until Joey came into my life.

My wife and I were browsing around a small town when we happened on a pet store that had budgies in a big cage in the window. As we watched them flitting from perch to perch, one of them caught my wife's attention. With its deep purplish wings and a snow-white head and breast, it was a beauty, for sure. My wife decided there and then that she had to have that bird.

Well, I had something to say about that.

"It would be a frosty Friday in July" I said, "before I would have a caged bird in the house. Case closed."

Anyway, my wife purchased the budgie, and that was that. As soon as we arrived home, my wife, being nothing if not original, named her new pet Joey. When she opened the cage door in order to put a small mirror inside, Joey came out like a rocket, and giving a great imitation of a Kamikaze pilot, flew into the wall, the door, the buffet, into everything, in fact, that looked solid. He seemed bent on committing suicide, and I secretly hoped he'd succeed. Better dead than caged, I thought.

My wife decided to leave Joey's cage door open so that he could come and go as he pleased. After that he would only enter his cage to eat and drink.

All the attention my wife showered on her pet turned out to be in vain. In spite of all her efforts he just didn't take to her. For some unknown reason Joey decided that I was going to be his buddy, and, in spite of myself I fell slowly under his spell.

Joey and I soon became inseparable. He would nestle on my shoulder while I read the paper, perch on the edge of my glass whenever he wanted a drink and he loved to shower while I washed my hands in the bathroom sink. His favourite sport, however, was riding on my razor while I shaved. You haven't lived until you've shaved with a budgie perched on your razor.

One evening, Joey went into his cage and wouldn't come out no matter how we coaxed him. He refused all food and water. Being an expert on budgies by this time, I figured Joey was just having an off day, like we all have from time to time.

When I got up the next morning, Sunday, I found Joey lying on the floor of his cage. He was dead. Without waking my wife, I took Joey out of his cage, put him in a small box, went outside and buried him.

When I returned to the kitchen, my wife was fixing breakfast. After telling her about Joey's funeral, we watched the news while we sipped our coffee. The news from around the world was the same old litany of horrors: famine in Africa, slaughter in the Middle East, chaos in Haiti. With so much suffering in the world, the death of a budgie seemed like pretty small stuff indeed. So someone's budgie dies on a Sunday morning in Scarborough? So what!

Who the hell cares? Who'll miss a lousy budgie, anyway?

I will.