Dan-chan was a little bird with a big heart and personality. The bathroom just off of our home-office was where he lived with an open door on his cage. We respected his space, and he knew that whenever he didn't want to be bothered he could go there and we would not put our hands in the cage and make him come out.

Last week he began to get noticeably weaker. His cage sits on a 3 foot stand and he could barely fly back to it. After about two days he was so much weaker that he couldn't even do that. Finally we had to "hospitalize" him in a box on the desk because he could not stand on his perch.

As he got worse, he could barely use his feet, even in the box. He would eat occasionally but had to drink from a plastic syringe. This went on for several days. Sometimes he would get a bit of strength and walk across the keyboard and desk, but most of the time he stayed sleeping next to his friend, the mirror.

Yesterday my wife came home and couldn't find him. She called his name and heard a feeble "cheep" and found him on the floor next to his cage stand. He had gotten up the strength and tried to fly to his cage, no doubt falling to the floor and walking the rest of the 15 feet. He really wanted to go back to his home.

My wife took him in her hand and gave him some water from the syringe. He lifted his head to try and take a drop, fluttered his wings a bit, and at 5:30 PM, died right there in her hand.

Maybe he wanted to die in his cage and just wanted to go home. And maybe he held on until his friend could get home before he left us forever. Knowing how sick he was it seems incredible that he could have gotten so far. There certainly was some serious determination going on there.