I was around four years old when my parents bought me Crispin, my first pet. A handsome yellow canary, Crispin was bad-tempered and behaved like an alpha male. He would spend hours preening. I thought he was enchanting.

A gentle female canary, Mariflor, arrived soon after. She became Crispin’s other half and the mother of their chicks, Maribel and Quintin. Having a canary family compensated for my lack of siblings and extended family. It gave me a sense of responsibility and filled my life with joy.

Every day, I would let the canaries out of their cage and they were free to roam around the flat. Crispin’s favourite place was the globe in my bedroom. Standing imposingly, he regularly gave his opinion on global affairs by pooping on countries whose governments he disapproved of. At least that’s how it seemed to me as a child. It was the 1980s, the time of the cold war, and my parents, who were political exiles of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, had temporarily settled in Venezuela.

My canaries’ diet included seeds, mango, papaya, red pepper, lettuce and spinach. After eating red pepper, Crispin’s plumage would, bizarrely, turn orange. These magical transformations truly amazed me.

Crispin was an exceptional singer and often sang perched above a ceiling light. He excelled at karaoke to a background of classical music. Mozart’s flute concertos and Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals were among his favourite pieces. Impressively, Crispin could recognise the final notes and stop singing at the exact point the music finished.

Crispin would take singing requests from me. Telling him he was the world’s most talented, intelligent and gracious canary almost always resulted in delightful serenades.

But it wasn’t so delightful when I needed to practise my violin. As a little bird with a big ego, he did not accept another musician at home and would work hard to be louder than me, even if I was playing in another room.

Crispin’s family gradually diminished. When Quintin became an adult, we had to find him new owners as father and son had started to become aggressive with each other. Mariflor and Maribel died of old age several years after we all moved to Chile. Crispin stopped singing and developed arthritis. He died peacefully when he was 20, a remarkable age for a canary.

Were Crispin alive today, he would probably still be pooping on my old globe, spoiled for choice about where to aim his disapproval, given the state of world affairs. I’ll always be thankful for Crispin – he showed me the value of being bold and colourful.