My wife had what she called a Tweety-bird from the time she was a little girl.
- When one parakeet died, we would buy another one, because she loved the sound of the bird in the morning.
Our most recent parakeet had only been with us for about a month, when it suddenly passed away. It was healthy, and since we had been longtime owners of parakeets, we knew it had to have something wrong with it. We bought another parakeet that afternoon, and within an hour of being in the house, it suddenly quit singing and died. My wife and I were so alarmed that we packed a bag and left the house. We remembered how miners would use parakeets to tell them when there was carbon monoxide in the mine. The bird would die before the carbon monoxide saturation got too bad for the miners. I called the HVAC company and the fire company as soon as we were out of the house. The HVAC company didn’t answer right away, but they called us back within a few minutes. I told them about our parakeet suddenly dying. I also told them that our HVAC technician was afraid that a part of our gas furnace was getting weaker. I said I had called the fire company, and they confirmed the house had a high concentration of carbon monoxide and we were lucky we had left. We had to purchase a new furnace. It’s funny because if our bird hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have known our furnace wasn’t working properly, and we may not have lived long enough to call the HVAC company.