I keep dreaming about those big, expressionless eyes. All black with no visible corneas, unblinking, staring out forever and ever. Many animals have eyes like that. When I was young, maybe eight years old, my father brought home a silver cockatiel. I’d begged for months. It wasn’t even my birthday, or a holiday, and he was a single father struggling to stay in medical school. But somehow he made it happen. The bird was one of a few splurges my father ever managed. Someone had