Some friends of mine had a budgie named Charlie who drank whisky on a daily basis from a teaspoon, mimicking the habit of their elderly father who drank the same whiskey daily from a glass. Charlie was an exceedingly long-lived bird for a budgie. His drinking bouts would prompt much inebriated squawking and swaying about on the perch and lecherous assaults upon his long-suffering companion, a female budgie named Honey. He would, in moments of avian enthusiasm, launch himself from the perch into a crazed, veering, unsteady, half-in-the-bag flight which normally ended in a spectacular crash landing and roll on the carpet, from where he would have to be rescued and returned eventually to the perch. He finally fell off the perch one day, having experienced an attack of some kind. He was rushed to the kitchen, where they held a teaspoon of whisky in front of his apparently lifeless form, hoping against hope that the love for his favorite libation would bring him back from death's door.

He opened his bleary little eyes for a moment...grabbed one last hearty beakful of whisky....and kicked the bucket. What a grand way for a bird to die!