Parrot Musings

In the continuing saga of wildlife goings-on at my work, here are a flock of wild turkeys that were wandering around as I left yesterday. Because it was a holiday, I was the only car around. I just loved seeing their footprints in the snow!
As I went to do a load of laundry yesterday, I pulled out what was in the dryer and then placed it at the bottom of the stairs to take with me on my next trip up to the bedroom. You may have noticed the strange assortment of clothes contained within -- darks, whites, towels. I don't know what Thomas was doing when he put that load together! But, Rocky loves laundry and made his way over, throwing out the clean clothes on the floor. Shortly after taking this picture, which I've nicknamed, "King of the Laundry," I brought the basket upstairs and placed Rocky back on his cage.
Here's Max, playing with a new toy from TNT Bird Toys. It is called the Wheel Tweet Large. Every single bird in my house loves this toy. I was saving it for a special occasion, but Max was driving me nuts yesterday. She kept flying over to me, begging for attention. I tried to read while petting her, but she wanted my undivided attention, so she started doing naughty things: perching on the aquarium, buzzing Beeps, chewing on the wall. I knew that a new toy would capture her attention and let me read another chapter in "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (This book is so good! I can barely put it down!)

Below her new toy, you can see a dog toy that we strung up on chain and filled with coconut fiber that we bought from The Parrot Asylum. There are a couple of wrapped pellets for her to find. Max loves foraging!

I haven't been writing too much about the lizards lately. They had been brumating for a while, which is kind of like hibernation. There isn't a lot of good information about uromastyx that we've been able to find. I was starting to get worried about them as Andreas had gone about 2 months without eliminating anything from his body. Weeks went by where neither emerged from their cave.

Then, about a month ago, we purchased new lights for them. These had been recommended by an Internet friend, Donna, who uses them for her bearded dragons. What a difference these lights made and I highly recommend them for anyone with lizards.

In the past month, Andreas is a changed uro, and his personality has been coming through in spades. He follows us around, and tries to be as close to us as possible. When I put my hands in his tank to change his food, he comes over and moves his head so that I pet him. He is a very personable and friendly lizard.

Here he was getting sick of me taking his picture, so he went back in his cave. However, as soon as he saw that I'd put the camera away, he came back out and was begging for attention!

Elsa, our female, is not as friendly as Andreas. She isn't mean at all, but prefers to not be handled. It will be interesting to see if she warms up to us as the years pass on; perhaps she just has a more aloof personality!