In the beginning of July '01, I had to go and see my vet with one of my birds. When I met him, the doctor told me about a budgie who has been brought into his practice one week ago by people from his neighborhood. Those people have found the bird outside and is wasn't only heavily exhausted but also seriously ill. The budgie suffered from scaly mites that covered its cere, the beak, the legs, the vent and also the eye lids. While my vet maintained the bird, he tried to contact its former owner. Despite all his efforts he did not succeed to it, and after three weeks he could not stand it any longer to see how lonely the poor budgie was in its cage that was standing in the house of my vet. Thus he asked me to adopt the cute budgie lady because he knew about my bird room and my attempts of keeping budgies as characteristic to the species as possible. On July 16. in 2001 the hen moved into my bird room and got her new name: Larissa.

According to her ring which was removed by my vet due to a strong swelling of her leg, Larissa hatched in 2000. She was an English budgie bred for exhibitions. Her colour mutation was quite uncommon: Larissa was a lacewing in blue - in fact the blue color seemed white in her variety. In fact she seemed to be white, but if you had a closer look you could see the sky blue touch on her belly.

Larissa didn't stay single for long. In the beginning of 2002, the lively and charming male budgie Rudi arrived in my bird room. He conquered Larissa's heart within a few hours after his arrival. From this day on, she belonged to him. She loved to be caressed by her mate and also liked to be fed like nearly every budgie hen does. Well, and she seemed not to be sad when her beloved one gave a lot of intention to his other babes - Rudi is the keeper of a feathered harem Larissa was a member of.

I can only presume about what has happened to Larissa before she was found by the neighbors of my vet. It seems as if she had a sad life before she managed to escape from her former home. Her body and especially her legs look as if she suffered from the scaly mites for a very long time - too long for a budgie to survive in the German nature. This means that it is most likely that she was already tortured by the mites when she was living at the home of her former keeper. The photo on the right shows the destruction of the sensitive skin around Larissa's eyes caused by the mites. In the photo above one can see the swelling of her left leg where her ring used to be. After months the swelling was still there, so I guess the mites have destroyed the skin at that part of Larissa's body, too. When Larissa was caught outside, she was a little bit overweighed what is a clue for my presumption that she didn't stay outside for long.

Larissa was lucky in two senses: First she survived her trip to nature. And after she was found, she was brought to a very handsome vet who cared for her not only with medicine, but also gave her the affection she needed.

In her lifetime, Larissa was a cheerful, considerate and friendly budgie lady. She was the balancing character of my little flock and her death on 12/28/02 leaves a gap in the social structure that will not be easy to fill by another bird. Four days before her death she got a heavy kidney infection - not her first, she suffered from that quite often. Despite of all our efforts to save her life with a strong antibiotic, we regrettably failed and lost my little feathered friend.

Meaning of the name
In the Greek mythology Larissa was the daughter of Pelasgos, the king of the Argonauts. A moon of Neptune that surrounds his planet in a distance of about 600 km is named after the king's daughter. My budgie got the name from the moon - and of course from the princess.