text: They know that I'm pedantic. I'm a neurotic, OCD, perfectionist and I live alone. They know that I hardly venture farther than the post boxes that lined the front of our apartment. They call me Sheldon Pooper for goodness sakes! They know that I over analyse every single move I make, or anyone else for that matter. They also know that I don't do pets. I don't pet them. I don't look at people with pets and say, Oh, what a cutie. What's his name?". And I certainly don't take care of them. So why on earth would my entire floor go for the long weekend and leave the Rudd's bird with me? It is beyond me. I mean, don't they know that they might come back and only find a lone feather laying somberly at the bottom of the cage. I don't know... Maybe the bird looks tempting and I'm hungry (gross), or maybe I accidentally leave the cage open and little birdy Rudd decides he wants to go and meet his siblings in the Rain Forest or something. I really don't know! You see I'm already losing my marbles. Everyone knows that you don't just start a story in the middle of nowhere. A story needs an introduction, a body and an end. I started my story with all of the above. That's just not how it's done. I really don't know. Let's start over, shall we? My name is Marrie. Not Marie. You've got to drag the -ar in Mar, like car, and then say the rie. Not like pie, but more like tree. Mar-rie but without the dash. Right. My name is Marrie. I live in an apartment, on the second floor, because if I lived on the first floor and someone decides to rob the place they would get to me first. And the third floor is too high that if I had an accident and fell over I would die. And I wasn’t ready to die either way, by robber or by falling. So, the second floor is perfect. I know everyone on my floor because I need to know who I'm dealing with and how they would affect my life. I actually know everyone in the building, but just for this story about the bird, I will only speak about the people on my floor. There's Elsa, she lives next door in apartment 5. Elsa loves men, and can be seen bringing a different man home every night. I know. I checked through the peephole. Also, if Elsa is really into it I can hear the excitement as if I was next to her. Well technically, our rooms are back to back. My other immediate neighbour is Wesley. He is secretly in love with Elsa. Every night when Elsa brings home a new man and the sounds behind my bedroom wall, I get bored after a while and go to the lounge to make sure everything is in place and fetch my headphones before going to bed. That's where I hear Wesley on the side of the wall, sitting in his lounge and crying over a lost love. Then there's Mrs. Norrix. She is seventy five years old, but likes to think she's 16. Mr. Norrix kicked the bucket before I moved into the apartment shortly after I moved in. Don't judge me. I didn't ask him to walk into the wet hallway just after I had mopped. Mopping was essential. Probably they hadn't mopped the hallway since the apartments were built. I couldn't stand dirt. So everyday at exactly seven in the morning, I mopped the hallway and all the way down the steps all the way to my own postbox. If my pathway was clean I could be content. Right, let's move on to the Rudd's. The reason I'm in this predicament in the first place. They moved in just three months ago and also caused havoc. Staying just across the hallway, and next door to Mrs. Norrix in the bigger apartments, and also the apartments with the better view, I am convinced that they moved in just to toss my life upside down. They were over friendly and wanted to get in your space all the time. Boundaries! They had one kid, a little pig-tailed girl that everyone on our floor seemed to dote on. I mean, what was so special about the kid anyway. I guess I should be grateful they didn't leave her with me. I just got stuck with the bird. Anyways, I think Mrs, Norrix was secretly super wealthy and rolling the bucks or something, because she invited everyone on the floor for an all expenses paid trip to some holiday resort. What did she expect? I don't know. That she would get some tips from Elsa on how to get shagged, or maybe that Wesley would be the one shagging her? I really don't know... Why she would invite the Rudd's is beyond me and how they fit into her plan. She probably did have a plan. Maybe she needed them to pretend she was the granny type. I really don't know. Back to the bird. So, obviously, with everyone on the floor gone, what were they going to do with the bird? Of course, everyone knew that I never ventured past the post boxes so I was the perfect candidate to keep the bird. But the problem was, oh there were many problems, who was I kidding. I already said that I didn't like pets. I hate sharing my space with anything else, I didn't even keep plants. Everything in my apartment had its place and was kept out of sight, otherwise I broke out in hives. And that was precisely what happened when I opened my door at seven this morning to mop the hallway. I was greeted by the Rudd's bird, his large, overbearing cage and a packet of bird-food or seeds or something. Of course I shut my door as soon as I realised there was a thing on my doorstep. I didn't do well with people, or pets, or plants, or rodents, or anything really. I only knew what I knew and wanted what I wanted. I don't know. I really don't know how they expected me to look after a bird. After a while, the bird started creating a racket. I put my headphones on and played Chopin's Minute Waltz on full blast. When it ended I decided to check the hallway again, loudly praying that it would all be a nightmare. BIG mistake! The dumb bird was still there. So I shut the door again. That's when the hives flared up. The bird started making silly squawking noises, so I played Chopin's farewell waltz piece this time in the hopes that the bird would bid farewell to out apartment building. I don't know how long I kept the headphones on, but besides the itching due to the hives, I was starting to get irritable and edgy because I could continue with my normal daily routine and that was messing with me big time. It was also right about this time that my battery died on the headphones and I heard the bird screeching, "Open the door, Sheldon Pooper, Sheldon Pooper, Sheldon Pooper!" That was it! I opened my door with such force, it banged against my wall and caused a chip in the paint. Now that would haunt me for the rest of my life because I was too afraid to take a walk to the hardware store to buy paint. I also refused to buy online from paces I didn;t know because I needed to screen who came to my apartment door. And they wouldn;t just leave the paint in the postbox like they do with bread and milk every Monday morning at 8, precisely the time I'm done wiping down the postbox. The bird was now making a song out of the name the floor nicked me. I didn't particularly care about the name, secretly it made me a little proud to be called after somebody on TV. What irked me was that this bird was literally begging for me to confront it. I really, really don't know. I have never even said two words to anyone in the hallway. Not Elsa, nor Wesley or the Rudds, and not even Mrs. Norrix when Mr. Norrix slipped on the wet hallway, bumped his head and bled to death. I just continued to mop around him. That;s when it hit me. I grabbed my bucket, measured out exactly 2 scoops of washing powder and exactly 6 jugs of water. On the way out I collected the mop from the cleaning closet and proceeded to continue my daily routine. If the bird's cage should fall while I was on duty then I would treat it exactly like Mr. Norrix. For the first time in a long time, I actually knew.