Apartment fire claims his cockatiel friends
“This man wanted to get back at his wife, who had been living in my apartment complex. So on a Fourth of July, he decided to throw a Molotov cocktail onto her porch. I was home at the time. I was about to go to bed when I hear this banging at my door. They said, ‘Get out. There’s a fire.’ So I grabbed what I could and got out of there. The fire burned four or five apartments, all because this guy was mad at his wife. The worst part was that she didn’t even live there anymore. She had moved a couple days before he did it. She knew he was going to do something like that, I guess. It was a little scary. It was 11 o’clock at night, and I had to go to work at the hospital the next day. The apartment people put us up in a hotel for a few nights. Then I had to move all my belongings to a different apartment.
My unit didn’t burn up, but there was a lot of smoke damage. I had two pet cockatiels named Pretty Boy and Jackie. One was white and the other was gray. When I opened my door after the fire and went over to their cage, they were both at the bottom because of the smoke. They were dead. That made me so angry, that somebody would do this for no good reason. But I have so many friends at the hospital. Everybody donated money, and I was able to get two new cockatiels. They were Buddy and Pretty Girl. I’ve since lost them, so I’m birdless now. But I’m thinking about getting one or two more.
“Cockatiels are great pets. They whistle. They chirp. They make wonderful sounds. And they’re really good company. The thing I like most about them is that they’re just really good friends.”
— Roger Roosa
Roger worked at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital (formerly San Jacinto Hospital) for 40 years. He is now a volunteer there.
Related:
