My parents bought Mali as a hatchling. She was only a few months old when they brought her home from the breeder. My parents named her Ruby after her red tail. When we went to pick her up, she was awkward and unsure of her new feathered body. It was hard not to laugh as we watched her learn how to climb the bars in her cage and balance on the perches only to flop to the bottom in an awkward mess of wings and legs. Thank goodness she survived that awkward stage of a grey’s life. She began talking almost immediately and seemed to always be mumbling to herself under her breath as if to practice what she wanted to say to us before delivering the line. When I graduated from the veterinary technology program I was attending, my parents presented her to me as a graduation gift and I changed her name to Mali after the country her ancestry is from, but her nickname is Rue (Short for Ruby). Mali was about a year old when she came to live with me even though I had known her for most of her life already. She is my smallest best friend and has been with me through thick and thin.
