Chirpy

From Candypedia
Chirpy
GenderFemale
Age4
BirthdayApril 7, 2004 (Aries)
SpeciesBird
FamilyLucy (Owner)
DebutSimple Pleasures, page 1
November 2, 2009 (2009-11-02)

Chirpy is the baby of Lucy’s little household of pets, a tiny pink bird who was hatched from an abandoned egg by Yashy and has called her Mommy ever since.[1] Sweet-natured, literal-minded and quick to love anyone who wanders into the house, she files the whole cast by species and gender, so Lucy is Girl-Kitty, Mike is Boy-Kitty and Blur is Boy-Birdie.[2][3] The one bird missing from Chirpy’s life was her real mother, and it took until the pets had left Roseville altogether for the two to be reunited — at which point Lucy learned that Chirpy had been born an “Amber”.[4]

Personality

Spending time with Chirpy means being loved immediately and misunderstood cheerfully. She takes every word at face value, repeats whatever Yashy just yelled, asks the questions nobody else in the room is willing to ask, and hands out hugs and declarations of love the way other people hand out Halloween candy. She is also a rather good kid, the sort who brushes her teeth without being told and worries when somebody looks sad. Underneath the sweetness sits a stubborn streak about being treated like a baby, and a small ache about being left behind that flares up when nobody expects it.

Chirpy hears the world about half right, and the comic gets a lot of mileage out of the other half. In Show and Tell she turns “genetic” into “generic”, then panics that blue-eyed Yashy must be going deaf and offers up her own ears on the spot.[5] She spends Unfulfilled Fantasy trying to find out what a prom is and gets the chapter’s last word with a frustrated “What is proooom!!”[6][7] When she finds Lucy’s computer relocated after a frozen video in Crash and Burn, she reasons that computers don’t usually take walks,[8] and her review of David’s adult magazine in Birthday Double-Team is a concerned “Is he hurting her?”[9] A good deal of her vocabulary is borrowed wholesale from Yashy, from the fist-shaking and the “Fleabag!” chant to cheering on a bear during the fire scare in Blurry Memories.[10][11][12] Veronica’s commentary notes that kids pick up languages quickly.[13]

For all that, she reads feelings far better than words. She is the pet who declares the household a family and calls for a group hug,[6] and who tells Lucy she loves her as a baby and again years later.[13][14] When the other pets crow about catching Paulo and Tess kissing in Return, she is the lone voice insisting the two of them are simply in love.[15] That same instinct makes her the conscience of a fairly conscience-free household. She tells Yashy off twice in one page for laughing at Mike’s broken leg,[16] and at Tess’s Christmas party she is the one who notices Mike sulking on the balcony and goes to check on him.[17] In the comic’s darker stretch the worrying turns quiet. She perches on a withdrawn Lucy’s head in Dinner Time even after being locked out of her room,[18] and she sits beside Yashy in the snow; at the Hospital, Yashy rests her head on Chirpy while Chirpy clings to her.[19][20]

The one thing she can’t stand is being treated as the baby she plainly is. Mike calling her one on that balcony gets an immediate denial,[17] and she has a habit of assuming she’s been forgotten, whether it’s sobbing that school means no Girl-Kitty in Yashy’s Birthday or being genuinely surprised that anyone remembered her birthday.[21][22] Both worries come from the same place. Veronica puts it this way in her commentary on Feline Festivities: “She really feels like she’s missing out on something, even though Yashy is right there.”[17] It is a pretty small wound most days, and it takes a party full of mothers and one badly timed outburst to open it up.[23]

Appearance

Chirpy is a small pink bird, tiny enough to perch on Lucy’s head, sit in her hand or curl up in her cradled arms next to Yashy.[18][24][25] She hatched on-panel as a cheeping chick in Flying Lessons,[1] and she couldn’t fly at all as an infant until Blur took her in hand.[26] These days she is frequently drawn in the air. The colouring runs in the family, too: her mother is a salmon-coloured bird with a bandana on her head, and her twin brother is a smaller red bird.[4]

She wears nothing day to day, but she does dress for occasions. There’s a party hat in Lucy’s Birthday,[27] and a fluffy scarf and mistletoe hat on the walk to Tess’s Christmas party.[28] She has a red scarf for the snow in Just Beautiful,[29] and for Halloween in Mischief Night a black-cat costume, complete with perky ears and a little bell.[30] The design itself predates the comic by a long way. Veronica has said she remembers a colouring book with a very cute bird design that inspired her to make Chirpy when she was about five.[31]

Significant events

Chirpy’s first words in the comic are a panicked “Girl-Kitty!! She broke a bone!!”, shouted after Yashy’s attempt to use her as a co-pilot ends in a crash in Simple Pleasures.[2] Flying Lessons then explains where she came from. Two years earlier a snake raided a nest and the mother bird fled, leaving one egg behind, which Yashy rescued and hatched.[32][1] The same chapter has Mike convincing her that Blur is her daddy, an idea she repeats with great enthusiasm and Yashy answers with her fists.[3] Through the rest of middle school she is mostly there for the jokes: the deafness panic in Show and Tell, the prom questions in Unfulfilled Fantasy, and two asides delivered straight to the reader in Catty Remarks and Field Day.[5][7][33][34]

Freshman year opens with Blurry Memories, whose flashbacks show her as a chick who can’t fly yet, playing peek-a-boo with Lucy and meeting a bandaged Blur for the first time.[13][26] That Christmas brings Feline Festivities, her biggest chapter by a wide margin. Separated from Yashy in the crowd at Tess’s party, she finds Mike sulking alone on the balcony and tries to cheer him up, and his response lands squarely on her mother’s absence.[35][17] She flees in tears, knocks herself out against Lucy’s head, and sleeps through the long talk about her adoption that follows.[36][37] The night ends with Lucy singing her a lullaby.[25][14]

The spring chapters are lighter going for her. She walks in on Lucy wrestling a frozen video in Crash and Burn,[8] and in Birthday Double-Team she shares a surprise party with Paulo that ends with a mix-up over David’s gift and a very bad afternoon for Paulo.[22][9]

The island trip gives her an adventure of her own. After the wave in Arrival she is the first to hug a revived Lucy,[38] and when the group gets lost in Search and Rescue, Lily sends her and Blur off to find help.[39] They haul Zachary away from his date and burst through the door announcing him to Pink-Kitty.[40][41] Fleeing the beast a little later, the two birds slam into the group and send everybody off a cliff, so the rescue is a mixed success.[42] Back home in Return, she joins the pets in gossiping about Paulo and Tess and earns Lucy’s praise for brushing her teeth unprompted.[15]

Sophomore year brings the Halloween cat costume in Mischief Night and a dance in Lucy’s hand while she sings in Rehearsal,[30][24] but her appearances go quiet as Lucy’s do. In Dinner Time she is locked out of Lucy’s room in tears.[43] She sits beside a sobbing Yashy in the snow on the last page of Just Beautiful.[19] After Lucy is hospitalized at the end of Breaking Up, she is on the hospital floor with the other pets while Yashy says goodbye to Mike.[20] That is her last on-panel appearance in the main timeline.

Some time later, in Witch Hunt, Lucy tells Sue what became of her. The pets stayed with Lucy’s aunt after the hospital, and Chirpy flew out and found both her mother and a twin brother. A single memory panel shows the tearful reunion.[4][44]

Major relationships

Yashy

Yashy insists on cracking Chirpy out of her shell in Flying Lessons.

Yashy was barely out of babyhood herself when she became a mother, which explains most of what follows. She warned the mother bird about the snake, caught the egg she left behind and promised to take care of it, then sat on it until it hatched and greeted the chick with “My.. baby!”[32][1] She says she has tried to be a good mom and that she’s the closest thing to one Chirpy has, but in the same breath she admits she’ll never get used to being called Mommy.[10][1] The parenting is about what you’d expect. Yashy would rather push video games than play peek-a-boo, and the infant Chirpy, who doesn’t like video games, is left asking whether Mommy hates her.[13] Veronica’s commentary on Feline Festivities allows that Yashy is “probably not the best mother material right now”, being a baby herself.[17] Chirpy adores her regardless, cheering on how far Mommy flew while Yashy pummels Mike, and picking up her every catchphrase.[3][11]

Yashy does protect her in her own way, reminding her to be on her best behaviour before company and putting Chirpy first in her imagined family picture.[12][45] Over time, though, the roles drift the other way. By Unfulfilled Fantasy it is Chirpy scolding Yashy for cruelty,[16] and in the sophomore winter she is the one keeping watch. She sits with Yashy as she sobs in the snow in Just Beautiful.[19] At the Hospital in Breaking Up, an exhausted Yashy rests her head on Chirpy while Chirpy clings to her.[20] The two of them end up at Lucy’s aunt’s house together, because Yashy refused to come back to Roseville and Chirpy, of course, stayed with Mommy.[4][44]

Lucy

Lucy sings Chirpy to sleep in Feline Festivities.

Lucy ended up doing the actual caretaking, and Chirpy has thanked her for it more than once. It’s Lucy who plays peek-a-boo with the chick and tells her to cheer up because she has Lucy too, and Chirpy’s answer, the first time she says it, is that she loves her Girl-Kitty.[13] From then on Chirpy is the household’s family spokesbird. She declares the group a family in Unfulfilled Fantasy and is the first to hug Lucy after the wave in Arrival.[6][38] When Lucy would rather sing to her pets than rehearse in Rehearsal, Chirpy coos that Girl-Kitty loves them.[46]

The Christmas of Feline Festivities is where Lucy finally says how much of that weight she feels. With Chirpy knocked out in her arms, she calls herself a poor caretaker and then, crying, tells Mike that she isn’t Chirpy’s mother.[37] Mike points out that longing for somebody else doesn’t stop you finding comfort in the people who love you, and Lucy takes that home. She sings “Arroz con leche” to Chirpy and Yashy, tells Chirpy she never wants her to hurt like that, and gets a sleepy thank-you for taking care of her.[37][25][14] The care runs the other way in the sophomore winter, when a withdrawn Lucy locks Chirpy out of her room in Dinner Time and Chirpy lands on her head anyway the moment the door opens.[43][18] They part after the hospital, when the pets stay with Lucy’s aunt. Asked in Witch Hunt whether she misses them, Lucy answers, “Every day. But I understand.”[44]

Mike

Boy-Kitty has been a fixture of the house since the start, and he has never quite made peace with sharing Lucy with her pets. He greets the story of Chirpy’s hatching with “I’m calling child services.”, and Veronica’s commentary confirms he is a bit jealous of them.[1][47] He is also the one who told Chirpy that Blur was her daddy and let Yashy deal with the fallout.[3] Chirpy, for her part, likes him without reservation, and she is angry on his behalf when his leg gets broken in Unfulfilled Fantasy.[16]

He tramples all over that goodwill in Feline Festivities. Sulking on Tess’s balcony over Sandy’s absence, he brushes off Chirpy’s worry with “You’re just a baby!”, rants about caring for somebody who isn’t even there, and asks whether she could begin to understand any of it.[17] She could, as it happens. Chirpy bursts into tears with “My mommy.. She never came back..”, screams at him to leave her alone, and flies off so blindly that she knocks herself out on Lucy’s head.[36] Mike is horrified at once and chases after her shouting apologies.[36] By the end of the night he concedes that little birds like her shouldn’t be underestimated, and that he and Lucy have done a pretty good job with her, most of the time. Lucy’s verdict is that she can always count on him to complain until he sends kids crying.[37] Chirpy shows no sign of a grudge afterwards. All the same, the household’s last word on Mike is Yashy’s hospital goodbye in Breaking Up, with Chirpy right beside her.[20]

Blur

Blur is Chirpy’s teacher, playmate and, thanks to Mike, her Daddy. Their first meeting in Blurry Memories has a freshly bandaged Blur offer a game of fly tag, only to discover the little bird can’t fly at all. His baffled “Yer a bird! Who’s your mother?!” gets a casual “’Sup.” from Yashy, and Blur takes over the lessons Yashy couldn’t give.[26][3] Chirpy chants his name when Yashy christens him, and the Daddy business that follows flusters Blur about as much as it infuriates Yashy.[26][3]

From then on the two birds tend to travel as a pair. They sob together when September means school and no Girl-Kitty in Yashy’s Birthday,[21] and in Search and Rescue they are dispatched for help together, drag Zachary back together, and knock everybody off a cliff together.[39][41][42] The noncanonical gag anthology Ships Ahoy, Season Five has a “Blur x Chirpy” entry that plays one of their rounds of fly tag as a mock romance, ending in a tackle-hug.[48]

Her birth mother and twin brother

Chirpy’s reunion with her mother, remembered in Witch Hunt.

Chirpy’s mother fled the snake with her other eggs and left one behind, and for most of the comic that is all anybody knows about her.[32] Yashy ends the origin story hopefully, telling Mike that they still haven’t found her mom and “Maybe one day she’ll fly back.”[1] Chirpy grows up on that hope. At Tess’s Christmas party in Feline Festivities she stops to watch mothers with their children and looks lost among them.[23] Lucy later explains that Chirpy has wondered about her real mother for as long as Lucy has had her, and has always known the house isn’t her real family.[37] The one time Chirpy says it out loud is on that balcony, and it is enough to send her fleeing into the dark.[36]

Chirpy did eventually find her, though it all happens off-panel and years later. In Witch Hunt Lucy reports that Chirpy flew out from her aunt’s house and met a bird who recognised her story, and that the two of them knew each other the moment they met. A single memory panel shows them tearfully holding hands while a smaller red brother watches in awe. Her mother knew her by another name entirely: Lucy relays the discovery with a puzzled “Turns out she’s an ‘Amber’?”[4] Veronica has said Chirpy was always meant to leave, because in the old series she left once she found her birth mother, and the commentary adds that she became an irregular visitor to the group afterwards.[49][4]

Minor relationships

Paulo

Meanie-Kitty and Chirpy are April birthday-mates, which is why they share a single surprise party in Birthday Double-Team. Veronica’s commentary says hers falls a few days before his and that she didn’t want to bother making two comics.[22] Chirpy repays the honour by receiving David’s adult magazine in the gift shuffle and showing the centrefold to Lucy, which dooms Paulo on the spot.[9] To be fair to her, she is also his only defender when the pets catch him kissing Tess in Return, insisting in her own words that “they LOVE each other!”[15]

Quotes

My mommy.. She never came back.. Chirpy, breaking down in front of Mike in Feline Festivities

Did you see how far Mommy FLIED?? Chirpy, starry-eyed while Yashy pummels Mike in Flying Lessons

Boy-Kitty said you’re my mommy and Boy-Birdie’s my daddy! Chirpy, breaking the news to Blur in Flying Lessons

MOMMY I’LL GIVE YOU MY EARS!! Chirpy, offering to fix Yashy’s entirely imaginary deafness in Show and Tell

That’s not nice, Mommy! How would you feel if you broke your leg? Chirpy, scolding Yashy over Mike’s injury in Unfulfilled Fantasy

It was only a kissie.. Meany-Kitty and Pink-Kitty love each otha! Chirpy, defending Paulo and Tess to a room of gossiping pets in Return

Meow! I’m tryin’ to curse ya! Chirpy, flying circles around Lucy in a black-cat costume in Mischief Night

Trivia

  • Flying Lessons is a remake of the DeviantArt-era chapter “Chirpy’s Introduction”, which was cut from the 2011 Volume One and restored later because Oliver really wanted to rescue the one chapter that explains where Chirpy came from. Veronica’s commentary notes the remake stripped out Yashy’s Yoshi-derived behaviour around the egg.[10][32]
  • The pets exist because Veronica “wanted Lucy to hold little cute animals like Misty was holding Togepi from Pokemon”, with the baby Yoshis of Super Mario World as the other inspiration, and she has described them as “permanent children” who were created to be ageless.[50][51]
  • Veronica’s commentary puts her at “like, two years old” at the Christmas of freshman year.[17]
  • She has a descriptor nickname for everybody: Girl-Kitty (Lucy), Boy-Kitty (Mike, and Zachary too), Boy-Birdie (Blur), Meanie-Kitty (Paulo), Boy-Doggie (David), Pink-Kitty (Tess) and Girl-Hedgie (Lily).[2][3][41][22][9][40][28] Yashy, in turn, is the only one who calls her “Chirps”.[2][10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Chapter 6: Flying Lessons, page 3
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 1
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Chapter 6: Flying Lessons, page 4
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 7
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 9: Show and Tell, page 2
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 2
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 14
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 36: Crash and Burn, page 4
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Birthday Double-Team, page 2
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Chapter 6: Flying Lessons, page 1
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 9: Show and Tell, page 4
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 4
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 2
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 16
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Chapter 45: Return, page 10
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 1
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 10
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 4
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 33
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 21
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Yashy’s Birthday, page 1
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 Birthday Double-Team, page 1
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 5
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Chapter 59: Rehearsal, page 3
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 15
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 7
  27. ↑ Lucy’s Birthday, page 3
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 4
  29. ↑ Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 29
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 57: Mischief Night, page 3
  31. ↑ “Ask response on where Chirpy’s design came from”. 2019-11-10.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Chapter 6: Flying Lessons, page 2
  33. ↑ Catty Remarks, page 2
  34. ↑ Chapter 16: Field Day, page 11
  35. ↑ Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 9
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 36.3 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 11
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 13
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 22
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 12
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 16
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 17
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 18
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 3
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 8
  45. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 11
  46. ↑ Chapter 59: Rehearsal, page 2
  47. ↑ Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 6
  48. ↑ Ships Ahoy, Season Five, page 12 🔒 (members only)
  49. ↑ “Ask response on Chirpy leaving the cast”. 2019-10-28.
  50. ↑ “Ask response on why Lucy has pets”. 2021-02-21.
  51. ↑ “Ask response on the pets’ ages”. 2026-03-07.
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