Brooms

One of the things that I love about having several parrots is that they each have their own personality. From living with them, I've usually got a pretty good idea of how each particular parrot will react to a situation, although there certainly can be surprises!

We try to only sweep when the parrots are in their cages (I think I've mentioned before that Beeps and Rocky both hate brooms). However, the other day, Thomas decided to sweep while all 5 of them were in the kitchen with us.

As expected, Beeps got really excited. This means he starts pacing in a determined way (he starts marching), his eyes flash red, he makes beeping sounds that are sharper and louder than normal, and he starts jerking his head around. These all lead to him flying at someone and attacking (in this case, the person with the broom).

Rocky, on the other hand, is determined to get as far away from the broom as he can. On this particular day, he ran over to the other side of the kitchen and took solace in his plants.
Max, Calypso, and Daphne are not phased by the broom.

Then, Thomas took out the vacuum cleaner. We rarely use this in our house as only our stairs and upper level (where the parrots are generally not allowed) are carpeted. We never walk on our carpet with shoes, and are rarely on our upper level (basically just for sleeping) so the carpet doesn't get very dirty. Also, we are definitely not neat freaks!

Rocky was terrified. He was quite agitated and wouldn't stop screaming. I tried putting him in his cage for him to feel safe, but that didn't help as he could still see Thomas with the vacuum cleaner on the stairs. Finally, I tried putting him in the bathroom (his favorite place) and he calmed down enough even to sing as the vacuum roared in the background. Funny guy!

In other news, I have finally finished knitting this scarf. I started working on it on the plane to Madrid last February and have been slowly making progress since then. I tend to have at least 3 projects going on at once, so maybe if I were a bit more focused, things would get done sooner.

I still have to block it (I have never done this before, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out!) but am in no hurry since the weather is finally warm enough where scarves are unnecessary!

I made this with the intention of giving it to Thomas, but he thinks it's a little too skinny for his taste. I guess we'll see what happens after the blocking (the edges do tend to curl in a little), but otherwise, I'll have a new scarf that, with its color, will match just about anything!