Nine months ago, a raccoon came into my parents’ house through the doggie door and bit the leg off my dad’s African Grey parrot. They came home to find Sergeant Bilko here lying in a pool of blood. The bird was in shock for a long time. He stopped talking. He just sat around, listless and depressed.

But then, a couple months ago, he got off his ass, and figured out how to get around with one leg, and taught himself to use his beak to compensate for the missing limb. While he was feeling better, he had clearly forgotten all the words and sounds he used to rattle off. Important things, like my dad burping and asking my mom if she was ready to go out. 

I spent a month in New York this summer and my parents looked after my dog Rufus. Bilko had only recently begun speaking again, and by the time I got back to Los Angeles he had learned to say “Rufus” “Rufus” over and over again. They’d clearly become friends in my absence.

Now I’m back at my parents’, waiting to hear back from the veterinary surgeon who is right now removing a tumor the size of a softball from Rufus’s spleen. I discovered something was wrong this morning, when Rufus didn’t want to go for his walk, and wobbled around like he hadn’t eaten in days. Turns out the tumor was bleeding for at least a good portion of the night, which is something of a blessing in disguise, because otherwise I might not have known anything was wrong.

An hour ago my dad showed me this video of Bilko getting himself out of his own cage, unwilling to be deterred by a major setback. Bilko asked us to put it on YouTube in solidarity with his good buddy Rufus, with the hope that Rufus recovers from his own problem and they can hang out again real soon.