Thursday, November 19, 2009

What is wrong with me?

So I've posted here many times that our flock is complete, at least until we're in another house. Things are good -- why rock the boat?

Then, I found a caique in rescue that is only several hours away from our house and, from the description, would fit in perfectly with our house. He loves singing and dancing! He's male! He's the perfect age!

Thomas and I tried to get him out of our minds, but we can't. I've sent an e-mail to the rescue to see if they'd consider adopting out of their area. Our mind is not yet made up, and I'm torn about whether I want them to say we're not eligible because they're too far for a home inspection or not.

Why do caiques have this hold on us? We've been able to resist so many parrots at the rescue where we volunteer, but put a 10+ male caique within reach and all reason goes out the window!

I'll keep you updated.

Update 1: After exchanging e-mails, it appears as though they would be open to considering adopting to us, which means we will have some important discussions over the next few days.

Update 2: My experiences this weekend are making me lean heavily in the direction of not applying to adopt this caique. Thomas is not yet on board with this decision and wants to mull things over a bit more.

Here is the crux of my argument: we have room for one more cage in our living room; 2 if we move the lizards to another room (I want all of my parrots in the main living area of the house since that's where we spend the majority of our time; the lizards wouldn't care if they were in another room). We also would have the time to devote to another bird, providing he isn't bird-aggressive. Financial resources are fine and do not enter into the equation. As for this specific bird, I know he would fit in perfectly to our flock and our lifestyle. We have the experience and resources to train him and give him a good life.

(Thomas was getting really excited when I started with the pros!)

However, given that we can't save everyone and have room for at most 1-2 more parrots, shouldn't we save those spaces for parrots who really need us? Parrots surrendered to the local rescue we support? Parrots like Stella, who was mutilating herself and needed to go into foster care? This caique does not appear to have behavioral issues -- he's just a typical high-energy caique. Plus he's already in a foster home instead of a facility, and therefore likely getting more one-on-one attention.

Obviously we still have a lot of thinking to do.

2 comments:

Scritches.com said...

It's so nice to know there are other complete parrot slaves out there.

cooleybird said...

So glad there are people like you and Thomas