A life worth remembering. Spencer Pratt’s beloved hummingbird died on Tuesday, October 24, and the reality star is in mourning.
“I’m trying to find positives out of it. It was traumatic,” he tells Us Weekly in an exclusive interview Wednesday, October 25. “Here’s the crazy part: I was in a deep sleep and I woke up from my sleep and was like, ‘My hummers!’ Then I was like, ‘They have nectar. They have enough.’ I usually have to fill my feeders around 10:30, so I knew all of them were fine so I went to bed.”
“But now I’m starting to trip out that he was dying on the deck and he was ESP’ng me to come save him,” Pratt recalls. “So that’s been sticking out to me, like, ‘Oh my God. Were the hummers tapping into my psyche in my sleep?’ Like, ‘Come save!’ I feel like I could have saved him if I had gotten up there and gotten himself the air conditioning.”
The Hills alum took to Snapchat on Tuesday to pay tribute to Lil Angel, who allegedly died due to the heat wave in Southern California. “I definitely think I need to go talk to a therapist, obviously, but the fact that I’m now thinking that I should take the feathers off of that angel hummer and put them in a vial and wear them in a necklace … When I say it out loud it sounds beyond strange, but I really feel that. I don’t know, I think that a therapist can explain to me why I want to do that,” Pratt said in the video. “I just feel like there’s so much beauty in that hummer that just burying him is, I don’t know, I just feel like his feathers should live on. They’re so magical.”
The former MTV star tells Us about the unique way he wanted to honor his beloved bird. “To be honest, I was really sad to find out it’s a federal crime to stuff a hummingbird. He was so beautiful and perfect and all his feathers were so magical. I never thought about stuffing anytime in my whole life and I never understood why people do it but then I saw how magical he looked even in death,” Pratt says. “I was like, ‘I need to stuff him and have him in a glass cue on our coffee table.’ When I started calling all the taxidermies, they all said it’s a federally protected animal. So it went form him being stuffed on our coffee table to a wonderful funeral attended by my good friend Edwin and I. It was definitely necessary.”
His wife, Heidi Montag, also weighed in on Lil Angel’s passing, telling Us, “These hummers have brought a joy into our lives and it’s sad what’s happening with the heat.”
Donations to help save hummingbirds can be made to the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network. “[They] saved my original hummer,” Pratt reveals. “They definitely take donations there. They’re a nonprofit in Santa Barbara. If it weren’t for them, I would never have been obsessed with hummingbirds. They kept my little baby Alan alive and bought Alan back to my house and we released Alan.”
Pratt explained that hummingbird owners should never use the red dye nectar that comes with the feeder. “It’s poisoning the hummers. There is a chance that it wasn’t the heat that killed Lil Angel,” he explains. “It definitely could have been one of my neighbors using red dye. Make your own nectar! It’s cheaper and easier.”
As to how one can make nectar? “Boil four cups of water. Once it’s cooled down a little bit, add one cup of white cane sugar. Let it cool and then put it in your feeder,” Pratt says. “If you think they’re not going to come, use a red feeder. Also, change your nectar. I change my nectar every day. Don’t feed hummers if you’re using red dye. Then you’re just killing him. I’m thankful Lil Angel is in heaven with all the holiest of nectar.”
Pratt previously revealed to Us that he delayed rushing Montag to the hospital to give birth to their newborn son Gunner in order to ensure that his hummers were safe and fed. “There was no way our baby was going to come home to a starving hummingbird sanctuary,” he told Us at the time. “I was like, ‘This is an emergency.’”
Added Montag: “I tried being patient, but it was getting ridiculous.”
