The Lost Parakeet and the Theory of Coincidence

“We are looking after a parakeet.”

By chance, I saw a post on X about a rescued bird.
It was a post to the effect that the rescue location was near my home, and although they had rescued it, they were in trouble because they had no experience keeping birds and the owner had not appeared at all.

“What should we do?”

I said to my wife while showing her the rescue bird post.
By the way, our family currently lives with four parakeets, and we are such enthusiastic bird lovers that we have even been featured in a parakeet-keeping book.

“Shall we look after it?”

My wife replied. And then,

• That we are neighbors with the rescuer.

• That we have experience keeping parakeets and have the proper environment for them.

• That if the owner is not found, we will keep it ourselves or take responsibility for finding a foster home.

We sent a DM to that effect, and after meeting once, it was decided that we would take it in.

The parakeet we took in was a small peach-faced lovebird, and while it wasn't exactly emaciated, it seemed to be having a little trouble breathing, bobbing its tail feathers up and down, and was constantly fussing around its beak.
Since it had been rescued outdoors, we took it to a hospital that specializes in birds, partly to check for any infectious diseases.

Mild pneumonia and rhinitis. That was the veterinarian's diagnosis.
They said it would take several weeks to get the results of the blood test, including whether or not there were any pathogens. I wanted to take an X-ray to check the details of the symptoms and confirm its sex, but considering the burden on the parakeet, we decided to do it another day and went home. For the time being, we are monitoring it with anti-inflammatory medication.

After about a week, perhaps due to the medicine or because it had gotten used to our home, the parakeet began to move around little by little. It started showing its energetic side, nibbling on family members' fingers and noses and playing by tearing up paper.

“Is it a boy? Or a girl?”

My daughter, who had just started second grade, asked me, but I had no idea.
It is difficult to tell the sex of a parakeet. Unlike many mammals, birds' testes are hidden inside their bodies.
For budgerigars, it is easy to tell by the color of the 'cere' above the beak, but since we have never lived with a peach-faced lovebird, we have no idea how to tell its sex. Even after looking it up, I found that it is particularly difficult to determine the sex of a peach-faced lovebird.
Once they become adults, you can tell by sex-specific mating behavior, but even after observing it, there are no signs of it being 'in heat,' so it might still be a young bird that hasn't reached adulthood yet.
In any case, the sex will have to wait until the next X-ray.

And then—the day of the X-ray.


Since I was at work and my daughter was at school, my wife had to go to the hospital alone.

“I will announce the sex at dinner.”

I spent the day excited by the email from my wife, which seemed to be sent after the examination, and finally, it was time for dinner.

—Now, I will announce the parakeet's sex!

My wife said with great energy. My daughter and I held our breath.

──Ta-da!! It has balls!!

My wife said this while holding up an X-ray photo on her smartphone.

“Yay!! It’s a boy!!”

My daughter, who had been hoping for a male, was delighted.

While the mother and daughter were squealing with excitement, I was quietly moved.
Moved by my daughter’s growth in understanding that it was a male through the colloquial term “balls.” And by my wife’s wit in adding nuance to a simple gender reveal by using the mysterious translation of “balls” instead of using blunt expressions like “male” or “boy.”

Even so, “balls”—what a wonderful expression it is.

For instance, it wouldn’t do to say, “It has testicles.” While that is a widely recognized, traditional, and great expression, it is somewhat inappropriate for a woman to say at the dinner table. As a word, “testicles” is immortal, but as a general rule, it is likely a forbidden word at a dinner table where children are sitting.
Conversely, saying “It has gonads” wouldn’t do either. While that is the formal name for balls, it is, how should I put it—heavy and stiff. Even if my wife had announced, “It has two gonads,” my daughter would have asked, “What’s a gonad?” and we would have been forced to rephrase it to “That means balls,” making it a double effort. Besides, my wife is a woman of grace and etiquette, so she is not so thick-skinned as to go around saying “gonads” during a meal. Gonads are the male production factory, but as a conversation flying across the dinner table, it is extremely unproductive.

After all, I couldn’t imagine a word better than “balls” in this situation.

It can be conveyed to people of all ages and genders without causing any discomfort, yet it changes its color and shade depending on the speaker’s position and the angle from which it is viewed. It is just like an aurora, discharging electricity in the atmosphere and raining down beautifully into the sky.
Speaking of discharge (aurora), “Hoden” is the German word for balls. It is a terrifying coincidence.
By the way, “Hoden” is often written with the kanji for “treasure field” in the meat industry. I don’t know who thought of it, but they likely compared the balls—the source of life—to a field where rice ears are swaying heavily, calling it a “treasure field.” It is truly a wonderful substitution of kanji. Incidentally, rice ears during the autumn harvest are golden all over. In other words, it becomes “golden treasure field.” If you rephrase this—yes, it leads back to “balls.” As one of the life forms carrying balls, I could not hold back the tears overflowing at the vindication of the “balls” that were about to be pushed out of the spotlight by the rise of the colloquial term.
And so, I named this beautiful conclusion the “Japan-Germany Hoden Declaration,” but it will never appear on an exam, so you don’t need to remember it.

🦜　　🦜　　🦜

In the end, putting up posters near where the parakeet was found and reporting it to the police did not bear fruit, and the owner never appeared.

The blood test was negative, and the parakeet, which had become completely healthy and attached to our family, was not put up for adoption but welcomed into our home.
The sight of it playing and flying around happily, even while occasionally being scolded by the resident parakeets, made the family smile and feel at ease.

By the way, the energetic lovebird was officially named “Melon.” Just to be clear, I did not name it by comparing its possession of balls to the spherical melon fruit.

It is a complete coincidence.

As it happens, another word for coincidence is “tamatama.”

[Photo: Author / Author’s wife]