Parrot Musings

Here's Beeps, playing on top of his cage. I love the way his colors stand out, along with those on the brightly colored toys. He was playing with the toy, which is what I was attempting to capture with my picture, but turned to look at me at the last moment, and he seems to have a shocked look on his face.

I have some sad news on our budgie front. It appears as though Jeff Saturday has a tumor. From the time we took him home, I was a bit concerned about the color of his legs, but chalked it up to nothing major. A few days ago, we noticed that he was having some trouble with his right side, and made movements similar to those that Lenny did as he started his downward health spiral. He sometimes has a bit of trouble perching, unless it's on flat surfaces, and Daphne had been knocking him off of flat surfaces. We think it's just instinct on her part to drive out weaker members of her flock. In any event, we've placed Jeff Saturday into his own cage, with plenty of flat surfaces and some heat to help him feel more comfortable.

Budgies are very prone to tumors because of inbreeding, among other factors. We had hoped to not run into that problem with Jeff Saturday since he's the color of wild budgies, and therefore we assumed there was less inbreeding in his past. We don't know how long he'll be with us, but we're hoping that we'll still have him for a long time. It's amazing how these guys can touch your life in a pretty short amount of time -- he's been in our house just over one month.

Onto more pleasant thoughts...

This morning I realized that I only had about 70 more pages left in The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was going to read for 10 minutes, which then turned into one more chapter, and finally the end of the book. I did get up early to read, and also stayed in bed about 30 minutes longer than normal so I could finish. This is the best book I've read in a long time. I could not put it down and have been persuaded that we must visit Florence, Italy in the next year or two.

The birds like routine and were puzzled as to why they were still in their cages. The aquarium and lizards' tanks are on an automatic timer, so the parrots feel that they should be up as soon as they see the lights. Normally if I'm not down when the lights go on, I hear Max saying "Hello! Come here!", Calypso whistling, Beeps beeping, the budgies chattering and Rocky ringing the bell at the bottom of his boing. This morning, Beeps, the budgies, and Rocky were performing their usual calls, but Max and Calypso pleasantly surprised me.

I heard Max saying, "Gimme a kiss!" and then Calypso would make a kiss sound. Then Max made the kiss sound. Back and forth this continued, with Max occasionally asking for a kiss, for probably around 5 minutes.

They were happy to come out of their cages for breakfast, and we continued the rest of our morning routine.

I can't believe it's Friday already. Have a great weekend!