Ozzy and May

Birds aren’t supposed to be pets. They belong in the wild, and that’s where I’d like them to stay.

Humans, though, have a habit of subduing everything given half a chance. Other animals, other humans, everything. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes strip where they say that if people could put a rainbow in a zoo, they would. Such is our urge to control other life and call it protection.

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, 15 June 1995.

Zoos, aquariums, pets, anything where we hold power over another living thing, makes me a little uncomfortable. I also know it’s human nature. I’m not calling anyone out. People are entitled to their opinions, as long as they don’t push them onto the next person. I just keep mine to myself and my distance from the cage.

Which is why I never got close to the birds on the island. Or so I thought.

A very expensive baby

Ozzy, a macaw, was bought by my colleagues in early 2024. Expensive, and barely a month old. A few months later came May, a sparrow.

To be fair to my colleagues, neither bird ever lived in a cage. The entire island of Machchafushi belonged to them. They roamed around freely like it was their own kingdom, and the rest of us were basically staff.

I kept my distance from both. Life has a sense of humour about people like that.

The sparrow who picked me

In May 2025, May decided I was her person. I still have no idea how, when or why. I never fed her. I never played with her. In a team of twenty, she picked the one guy who wanted nothing to do with her.

For a whole month she wouldn’t let me go anywhere. She followed me around watersports. She chirped in my ear, bit my ear, bit my chain, and made sure I never had a proper conversation with a single guest. A very small, very loud manager.

It felt weird at first. All that attention, and I hadn’t done a thing to earn it. But that little fucker grew on me.

Then one morning in July, I walked to watersports hoping May would see me coming and land on my shoulder like she had for two months. Nothing. No chirp, no ear, no chain. I spent the whole day whistling around the island, calling for her.

I made peace with it. I told myself she had moved on to a better place.

The spoiled brat

Ozzy was the centre of attraction. Guests loved him, staff loved him, and everyone on the island fed him, petted him and played with him. He lived like royalty. Macaws can live up to 50 years, and he was still a baby, even in human terms.

After May, he started to annoy me. I still didn’t play with him. I’d shoo him off the counter so he wouldn’t break things, which didn’t bother him at all. For Ozzy, that counted as playing. If I ignored him, he walked all the way to my cabin to nibble my feet. And if that didn’t work, he turned into a cranky toddler and chewed everything around him until someone looked up.

A couple of days ago, Ozzy drowned in the ocean. I saw his body. There’s no good way to say what that was like.

Two pets that weren’t mine

I never owned either of them. I didn’t want to. Both of them annoyed the hell out of me, and both of them chose me anyway. Then one morning each, they were gone.

I still think birds belong in the wild. I haven’t changed my mind about any of it. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being followed around by two of them.

Someone please ask life to stop taking things away from me.

For Ozzy and May.

— Yoki