Sisiw

Reading Chico’s post about his pet dog Tyro made me missed our previous pet.

Though it is not a dog, I could say that it is just as smart as the trained canine.

It is a chick and we named it “Sisiw”. At first, we deny to ourselves that he is special. Not just your ordinary chick. But when he was gone, we can’t help but compare him with other birds.

I bought Sisiw from a walking vendor who sells chicks as “pabunot” at the streets. When the manung told me to select which one would I like to take, I held my palm in front of the cage door and he jumped into my hands without a question. I got surprised and deep within me, as I look at him on my hand, I felt an inexplainable touch of happiness in my heart. He just sat there in my hands and went to sleep as if he was home. He was so small and so cute. I cuddled him using my hands then went home.

On his first night, we placed him on the floor for a while we look for his soon to be house. We found a big paper bag and decided to use it for the meantime. He felt asleep between our feet. Whenever we try to move away our feet, he would follow us and when we stop, he would also stop and get back to sleep. So, we decided to just let stay there in the living room floor.

The first trick that he learned was play dead. If you trap him between, your hands, he would close his eyes and let his head hang down as if he is really dead. Then, we slowly remove our hands and let him be. After a few seconds, he would open his eyes, if he saw you staring at him, he would close his eyes again.

He was such a lazy bird who doesn’t know anything but to take a nap. Sometimes, while he is sleeping, we could hear him snore softly “chirp chirp chirp… chirp chirp chirp…”.

He is also a very glutonous bird. There was this one time when his neck got so big that it seemed like he swallowed a big marble. His favorite food was “Pancit Canton”. He wouldn’t it if it is not pancit canton or rice and he hates chicken feed.

Some of the weird facts about him are he doesn’t know how to chirp like a chicken. Believe me, it is a very rare occassion that he make a sound. He doesn’t even know how to drink water using his beak. He would easily drown drinking water of 1-cm in depth. Most of the time, we would use a medicine dropper just so he could drink water.

Whenever we are angry or sad, he would always do clumsy acts that would really crack us up. And whenever, he did something wrong and heard his name, he would run as far and as fast as he could that he almost stumble up sometimes.

He doesn’t like his poop. He would do his act at the very same spot always and would start pecking your feet just to say “Hey man, I pooped over there”.

And when he is sick, he would just lay down on top of a chair and sleep. He doesn’t want to be disturbed and don’t want a noisy surrounding.

And yes, he takes a bath. 🙂 Whenever he takes a bath, he looks like a homeless chicken with no feathers. “So kawawa naman the look.” He liked to be wrapped with towel until he is dry. And while he is wrapped, again, he takes a sleep.

At night, as long as everyone is awake, he would play around the room hunting for cockcroaches and insects. And when he gets tired, he would settled down beside our feed or jumps to lap or shoulders where he would rests in a comfy sleep.

In the morning, he became our alarm clock. He won’t stop pecking your feet, legs or face until you wake up and rise up in bed. Then he would walk around you and you could see his face saying “food… food… food…”.

He loves to snatch anything that we our holding then would run away fast. He thinks that everything that we are holding our food. The number one in his lists are cigarettes. Sometimes when you caught him, we would be playing tug-of-war because he doesn’t want to give what he just took.

It was a really painful death we he died. It hurts more because we knew in ourselves that we took care of him in the best way that we could. He was killed by a rodent and ate his head leaving us only a headless chicken.

I really cried buckets of tears. Everyone said “ano ba, manok lang yan”. They can’t understand our pain.

Up until now, we misses him a lot. His funny ways of making us laugh. His pasaway and makukulit moments. He became our best buddy who always listen to our words and patiently waited for us to get home.