What can you say about a 22-year-old cockatiel who died? That he was beautiful and brilliant? That he loved Looney Tunes, millet and me?

TWENTY-TWO YEARS ago this June I walked into a pet store on Guadalupe Street in Austin, Texas, to buy a cockatiel.

My timing was perfect. This particular store had cockatiels in spades, a flock of youngsters in a waist-high pen. And what comedians they were! They milled about and pecked at the sawdust, bumping and jostling one another like Keystone cops.

One young bird made a beeline for me. He regarded the button on my shirt with instant affection. I liked the white patch of feathers on his head. We wanted one another, each for our own reasons. It was kismet. I took him home.

I can’t believe now how long ago that was. When I got Allie, Reagan was president and disco still reigned. I was fresh out of college, and Laura Ingalls was falling in love with frontiersman Almanzo Wilder on the TV show Little House on the Prairie.

Portrait of the aerialist as a young bird.

My Almanzo was Placido Domingo, Indiana Jones and the Wright Brothers all rolled into one three-ounce dynamo.

Allie could whistle Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes from start to finish, work his way up the scale in seesawing notes, and finish off the concert with a bawdy wolf whistle.

An intrepid explorer, he conquered bookshelves, the space behind the couch, and grocery sacks left on the kitchen floor.

He was a precision aerialist, capable of making graceful, dizzying sweeps of the kitchen, living room and dining room inches away from walls and furniture.

A consummate traveler, Allie perched on the steering wheel for the four-hour drive to see my parents once a month. Delighted motorists pointed and waved. I nodded proudly.

When I drove cross-country to California in 1989, Allie rode in a cage laid lengthwise in the back of my 280ZX. He nearly succumbed to heatstroke before I pulled over in a panic at a Walmart somewhere in Arizona and bought poster board to tape inside the window.

Allie survived other Stupid Owner Tricks, including frying pans without lids and plate-glass windows. He survived Sydney, bought so he wouldn’t be lonely while I worked.

Vexed at finding herself in an arranged marriage, Sydney the pied cockatiel could just endure her new husband. Allie adored her with all his heart and ignored me for the next 10 years. When Sydney died, Allie and I picked up where we left off, friends again.

For more than two decades, Allie occupied a ringside seat to my life, a feathered Forrest Gump who popped up in all the most unlikely places.

He was the subject of fights with my ex (“How dare you grab him like that!”). A frequent helper in the kitchen, he was the unappetizing reason I had to throw out the raisin sauce for the first meal I made Paul 13 years later.

He was there through eight jobs, 17 moves, 147 holidays, two marriages, one divorce, and my parents’ deaths. Every time I turned the key in the lock, it was his voice I heard. His dainty beak marks can be found on most of the books I own.

When I got Allie, he was an Adonis among grey cockatiels, sleek and fully crested, the picture of robust avian health. In recent years, he played the cranky old man.

He developed liver problems and slept a lot. He shunned baths, which made his plumage look dull and shabby, and he shocked us by losing most of the feathers on his head. New toys and foods frightened him. He was given to alarming bouts of asthmatic breathing.

But he was still my Allie, with a voracious appetite for millet. He could still hop and bang his beak to show how happy he was to see me. I imagined his eyes shone with pleasure when we whistled duets. He flew beelines to my shoulder.

Returning home from dinner one night in December, I found him crumpled on the floor of his cage, unable to move.

I pulled the tray out and placed it on the floor, lowered the lights, and lay down beside him. For half an hour, I stroked his head and crooned endearments I knew he favored: “Such a good boy. How’s my Allie? What a sweet bird. Allie, Allie, Allie.”

He regarded me with one bright eye, blinking occasionally. His labored breathing stopped; it started again. Maybe he’ll get better, I thought crazily; he always had before. It stopped. I got up and left the room.

We moved Allie's cage to the basement that night so I would not have to see it in the morning, or ever again. I made a soft nest of Kleenex for him inside the box my new camera came in.

As I stood in the kitchen, taping the ends shut, I turned to my husband’s own tear-streaked face and cracked, “I feel some bad poetry coming on.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Do it.”

Here it is.

May you and your bird enjoy as many wonderful years as Allie and I had, and many more.

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