息子が小学校１年の頃、ブルーサファイア（色鮮やかな青輝鳥）のつがいを飼っていました。
先日の夕方、庭に水撒きをしたとき、道路に流れる水を飲みにきたスズメを見て、洗う為に弱めたホースの水をケージにかけると、わざわざ流水に飛び込んで水浴びを楽しんでたこの二羽のことを思い出しました。（アフリカ原産なので、水浴びをする習性でもあったのか・・・）
この二羽について、６年前くらいに英語（Globish）の作文の練習に書いたものがありますので、たまには趣向を変えてこれを。
‘Blue and Sapphire’
When I was 4 years old, we have a boxer dog which name was ‘Arou’. As both my sisters were afraid of this dog, my father gave the dog to his friend after a few years. So I don’t remember Arou well.
Next dog came our home when I was a junior high school. He was a Maltese dog. His name was ‘Chiro’. He was very clever and lovely dog. He had lived for 13 years. He was not only a pet, but my brother.
I had many birds in my youth and after married I had had a pair of birds.
7 years ago, We bought two blue finches. They were ‘Red-Cheeked Cordon-Bleu ’. The male has a red patch in his each cheek, but the female doesn’t have. They were really beautiful and it was a bit rare to see them in Japan .
When we happened to visit to a pets shop, I noticed a female blue finch in the birdcage was looking at me. She was really with composure, though the other birds were noisy. The female blue finch looked like a queen. I felt as if she told me “Take me and my husband to your home.”. We had no idea of having pets then, but we decided to buy them.
We named the male ‘Blue’ and the female ‘Sapphire’.
The first, Sapphire was very feminine, and she didn’t eat foods before her husband. She seemed to be a wife who put up a husband very much.
After a while, I noticed a side of Blue’s cheek was strange. His feather of cheek comes off a little. I took him and his wife to an animal hospital. After checking, the doctor told me “He doesn’t have any problem in his health. I think the female finch pulled his feather.”
I didn’t agree with him, because they were always very close.
The doctor went on. “Perhaps the female have done in night.”
After Sapphire laid eggs, Blue’s cheek became good. After that Sapphire changed to a bad wife. She didn’t sit on her eggs often. Her husband usually sat on the eggs. She ate before his husband (Their eggs didn’t hatch after all.)
‘Cordon-Bleu’ usually doesn’t take to persons. So Blue and Sapphire didn’t take to us, and we couldn’t play with them. But we could feel they were interested in us.
To my regret, they hadn’t been in our house long.
When it was past about 5 months, the accident happened.
While I put the birdcage outside and left for a moment, a cat came and pushed the birdcage, and they flow away from the birdcage.
I could hear their songs then, so I looked for them, but I could not find them at all. I had window opened for a long time, but they had never come back.
One day after passing a month, my little boy came home from the school and said with exciting face,
“Under the tire (one of playground equipments) in the school ground, I found a dead blue finch. To my surprise it really looked like ‘Blue’.”
He seemed he didn’t think the finch was ‘Blue’, because I had told him “Blue and Sapphire had gone away. They must be enjoying outside of the birdcage.”. He had believed ‘Blue’ and ‘Sapphire’ were still alive.
I run to the school ground with him, and I saw a dead finch there. I was sure he was our ‘Blue’.
We buried the blue finch under the tree of the school ground.
I don’t know what happened to Sapphire after the accident, but I suspect she is alive yet.
ペットロス症候群が怖いので、この後は動物を飼っても魚やハムスターどまりでしたが、今は大学生になった息子にずっと犬猫くらいの動物を飼う経験をもたせなかったというのは、やはり可哀想だったかな・・と時々思ったりします。
息子が動物を欲しがったときに、「うちには、もう猿（注：息子のこと）が一匹いるから、動物は飼わないの」と言っていた母を、息子は恨んでいるかな。
