Birds. They are such strange little animals with such strong personalities. Both of our parrots are little comedians, but they are funny in completely different ways. Charley is mostly funny in the things he says, particularly in the timing of them. He'll hear a loud bang and yell "Careful!" or the dogs will be making a ruckus in the next room and he'll say "Girls! What's going on in there?"

Holly is completely different. She talks but her vocabulary is very limited. She has more "funny actions" than Charley, though. When she's sitting on Andy's arm, she will reach up her foot to her head and clench it and flex it repeatedly. She's making the motion like she wants her head rubbed. It is so cute. The other thing silly she loves to do is not as much fun for me as it leaves a big mess for me to clean up. She goes over to one of her food bowls, the one that has a mix of pellets and seeds and nuts. She will take one foot and put it in the bowl and root around, then in a few quick swipes she grabs footfuls of seeds and pellets and throws them forcefully out of the cage. They go far, too! She will throw out half a bowl of food this way and thinks it is great fun. Of course the floor is a mess for about ten feet in front of her cage, but that is part of the fun to her. The dogs clean up the majority of it, but then leave slobber all over the floor.

Strange, strange birds.

Today Andy and I were doing some errands and I spotted a bird shop that we had never been in before. We went in just to look around and there were some very interesting parrots, but Andy was especially transfixed by one bird that appeared to be not quite right. It was a rather large macaw of strange coloration that we did not recognize. The bird's feet were not normal looking by any means and he seemed to have a very hard time just sitting on a perch or climbing around the cage.

We heard the pet shop owner telling someone else that the bird was handicapped- that he was born without the flat part of his feet and as a baby his feet were completely balled up. They had worked with him and stretched his feet out as much as possible and he is doing fairly well now, but he will never be quite right. The bird was a cross between a Scarlet Macaw and a Blue and Gold Macaw, which supposedly happens in nature, and is known as a Catalina Macaw. It does make me wonder if he turned out that way due to the cross breeding of species.

Still, I can't stop thinking of this bird. I felt that I wanted to take him home and take care of him. Andy really liked him a lot too. I think he felt the same way- that this bird needed special care. We must both be a little sick in the head (since we already have ten animals), but at least we are alike.

It has been a fun-filled day today, the beginning of my birthday weekend. This morning, I took Michaela to her final dog training class where we miserably failed her final test. It is okay; she did improve quite a bit in her socialization, but she is still terrible about walking on a leash. She always wants to jump up and bite my butt to get my attention, or she chews on the leash out of nervousness. She never learned the stay command at all. But, she got out of the class what I wanted for her; she is more comfortable around other people and dogs, so I am happy. I am not enough of a glutton for punishment to put her through any more obedience classes, though!

This afternoon we went to our scheduled visit at the Turtle Farm. We got to look at all kinds of hatchlings and it was very hard to pick out just one. The choice was made easier because I knew I was going to get another Hermann's tortoise so it could eventually interact with Virgil, and there were only two of them. Still it was very hard to pick one. I chose the smaller of the two. Hermann's tortoises can' be sexed until they are quite a bit older (we don't even know if Virgil is a boy yet) so we just have to guess. Since we guessed boy for Virgil, we are going along as though this baby is a girl. I haven't named her yet, but I have a couple of names in mind. I kind of like Violet, and it goes well with Virgil, but I also like Emma. I will think about it more tomorrow and come to some sort of decision then.

This is the little baby here. She is really cute and looks almost just like Virgil did when we got him last year. She has to be kept separately form him for a sort of quarantine period for a while, so I can't show the size difference in them, but he is a LOT bigger than she is. It is hard to believe how much he has grown in a year. Below is a picture of the house we have set up for her in a wine crate. I have to go get her a few things tomorrow from the store; the correct lighting and such, but we had most of the things she needed like a water bowl and a hut to hide in because she can use the ones Virgil outgrew. I just love her.

To finish off the day, we went to another bird class at the bird store here. We took Charley with us in his carrier, and he said "Hi" "Hi" "Hi" during the presentation because he was nervous. I got him out and held him for part of it. Several other people were there wiith their birds and it is fun to see the different ones and how they interact with their owners.

And that is how I spent the day, surrounded with animals just as I like. I hope you all are having a great weekend!

My model for today's post is Holly, the cockatoo. She is such a little weirdo- but lots of fun now that she is comfortable with us. She comes out to play every night and spends time on an open perch flying back and forth from there to the top of my head. Poor thing has little pointy pin feathers poking out all over her where she is growing in new ones. She's over there on her perch now just flapping her wings like crazy, trying to get the dogs to pay attention to her, but they've seen it all before and are not impressed. Hehe. I think she is disappointed that she can't get them riled up. Birds are strange.

I was sitting here in my PJs in front of the puter and I was going to write about how Holly, our adopted Eleanora Cockatoo, has been doing much better and how she is finally spending time with us outside of her cage. She has gone from not liking me at all and being terrified of me to liking me the best. Go figure. I finally am able to let her sit on her little playstand next to me while I am sitting at the computer and that has been a long time coming. She just decided a minute ago that she was going to fly over here, land on my head and start preening my hair, hence the pictures that I snapped with the camera on my iMac. What a silly girl. She has been going back and forth between my head and the perch ever since then.

We had a wonderful weekend day today. The pool was finally the perfect temperature for swimming, so we got to spend some quality time in the pool. Louie was absolutely ecstatic. If you haven't been a reader here for a while, Louie is one of our dogs that just loves water, at least to wade in. We could hardly keep him out of the pool when it was warm out- there is a beach type entry in the shallow end- so he would just run in anytime he wanted and run back in the house through the dog door splashing water everywhere. Last year we had a pool safety fence installed to keep the dogs safe since our little Cody is nearly blind now due to cataracts from his diabetes. Poor Lou hasn't been able to get in the water for months now. He made up for it today.

Little Ramona didn't know what to think of the pool. She has seen it and been around it ever since she has been here, but always on the other side of the safety fence. She was afraid to come over at first. After a while she finally came over to see what we were doing. She even dipped her toes in at the beach area and eventually we had her walking into the water, wading up to her chest. She had a good time and didn't get scared at all. I wanted to introduce her slowly so that she doesn't develop a fear of water. We'll wait until she is very comfortable before we work on her swimming skills. All the dogs need to work on their swimming skills now that it is warm enough again.

And speaking of new experiences, Holly, our recently adopted cockatoo, had some new adventures with us this weekend as well. I don't know if you are aware of this, but cockatoos are notoriously "dusty." When you pet her, your fingers get covered with a white dusty substance that she produces and she has been getting dirtier and dirtier. Holly was okay with me and Andy petting her- she loves that- but she hadn't let us pick her up much at all. Finally this weekend, I worked with her quite a bit and got her comfortable being held and walking around with her. I really wanted to give her a bath because she was soooo dusty, but she would freak out if I tried to put her down on the perch in the bathtub. My aunt, her previous owner, used to take her in the shower with her. After we went swimming today, I decided to try that. I brought her in the shower, and she was a bit scared, but overall she did pretty well. She spent a lot of the time standing on top of my head- just try to picture that, me with a giant bird on top of my head, ha!- but I figured it could be worse. With her up there she had a good grip on my hair, I could put her under the shower spray to get her clean, and there was no body part of mine up there that she could bite if she got agitated. So, while she wasn't too thrilled about the whole shower thing, but she did get pretty clean and wasn't terribly distressed about it. I know she has to feel much better now.

So that is about it for us this weekend. We made a brief appearance at a small party, did lots of household chores, and got to enjoy ourselves a little. Now it is back to work for the week. Ugh. How was your weekend?

So our shower door upstairs has been sticking quite a lot lately, and Andy finally decided that it was time for him to take it apart and fix it. The shower doors have been in place for about four or five years. Andy found them on clearance at Lowes for only about a third of the regular price and they have been great up until about two weeks ago. When he took them apart, he found that one of the little wheels that the doors ride on had come apart and all of the bearings had come out.

I went to this great local hardware store that was established in 1885 to find replacements for the shower door wheels. The place is unbelievable, they carry over 64,000 different items, and will order anything you could possibly need. Every time I go there looking for something I see more different parts of the store, which is un-air conditioned and built almost like a small complex of buildings. This time a nice little old man led me through a different building that I had never seen before up to the second floor which was like an attic with fans blowing air through the place. We passed umpteen thousand little bins of assorted hardware and finally got to the section with different obscure door hardware, where we found, of course the very wheels I needed.

Andy decided to take the opportunity to take the whole frame for the shower doors out completely and re-caulk everything. What a mess. So we have had to use the downstairs bathroom to shower since yesterday. Andy took one shower in that bathroom and immediately went out to buy a new shower head for it. I could have told him that the one we had was horrible, but until he tried it for himself it wouldn't have made that kind of impact. That bathroom is the one we use to bathe dogs, and the shower head has to be one of those kind that has a hose and detaches. Thenew one he got works soooo much better; I put it through its paces by washing two dogs already.

We also use that tub to wash Charley, the parrot. He has a perch that sits down in the bottom of the tub and we take the shower head down low and spray the water up so that it rains down on him, which he loves. When we tried to give him a bath with the new shower head, he wasn't having any of it. The old shower head was white, the new one is chrome, and he didn't like it one bit. He took off flying when the shower head came near him.

Finally, I was able to show him that it was just water, just like the old shower head he liked so much, and then he was fine. You would have thought I was trying to spray him with acid, or something. Birds. So very strange.

This evening Andy and I went to a two hour long bird class. There is a large bird supply store here locally, one of the biggest in the state, and one of the owners has many years of experience with birds and likes to share it. We all brought our own folding chairs and sat while she demonstrated some interesting things with her cockatoo of twenty years and talked to us about all kinds of things like toys, nutrition, screaming and so on. Her cockatoo was a complete ham and the star of the show. She had the greatest trick where she would spread her wings out and up in a vee shape and say "Ta-da!" on command. So cute. A few people brought their birds with them to the class too and there are lots of birds in the store- some for sale and some there for boarding- so it was fun to walk around to see them all and listen to them talk and whistle and sing.

There were probaly about twenty people at the class and at one point we went around and everyone said what kind of birds they had. There were a few that were even crazier than Andy and me; they had more than two large parrots. They probably didn't also have six dogs though, but that is beside the point. I love doing things like attending this class. Something completely different and lots of fun for an animal lover liike me.

Historically, I have always been an impatient person, wanting always to have instant gratification. Over the last few years, I have almost reversed that completely and now I am quite patient after suffering through a year to have a pool built, almost a year and a half of work and we still haven't even broken ground for our new house, and any number of other things I have had to wait for lately. It seems like everything is a wait anymore, and I have dealt with it by having so many irons in the fire that I haven't had time to worry about waiting for any one of them.

My newfound patience has come in handy for other things as well, such as dealing with our animals. When we first got Holly, our adopted Eleanora cockatoo over six weeks ago, she didn't like me. I think that she is the first animal that I have met that didn't like me right off the bat and I was almost a little offended. Still I was determined that she would come around eventually, and I just persisted in interacting with her in whatever ways she would tolerate. She wouldn't let me touch her- she'd run to the other side of the cage if my hand came near her, so I would play a game with her where I would hand her a toy, and she would take it in her beak and fling it on to the bottom of the cage. This would be repeated over and over and over again. I would talk to her all the time and give her treats from my fingers once she finally got close enough to take them from me. Finally, this weekend, she decided that I am not so bad, and now she wants me to pet her and rub her head all the time. This is a complete change of heart for her and I am so happy that she finally trusts me. But it took a lot of patience to get there.

Ramona has also been a bit of an exercise in patience and perseverance. I took her to her puppy kindergarten class tonight and by now, her sixth week, she is like a completely different dog. She is easy-going, plays with the other dogs, doesn't lash out at anyone and is one of the best dogs in the class as far as obeying commands and walking on a leash. The instructors can hardly beleive the difference in her and wish they had video of her from the first class through until now because it has been such a dramatic change. I am so glad that I took her to the class in the first place as it will really make a difference in her life to have gotten over her fears. I think she will be ready to graduate in a couple of weeks and then I am going to enroll her in a basic obedience course to build on her skills and make sure she doesn't have any regression of her socialization.

So I guess I am a lot better at waiting for things than I used to be. The key for me is distraction; if I have a bunch of other stuff going on then I will forget what I am waiting for. What about you? Do you have the patience of Job, or are you one of those "are we there yet? are we there yet?" types? What kind of things really try your patience or have had you waiting for the longest time?

One of the things about having a decent amount of energy again is that I have been able to spend more time on activities I have wanted to pursue which means less time on the computer and less posting here. Also, Andy went back to first shift this week which means we are on the same schedule for the first time in over a year.

Ramona is actually doing much better in puppy class now- she has had some breakthroughs in this week's class. She even wagged her tail and play bowed at one of the other dogs this past session, and she is perfect at the puppy commands we have been teaching her. She does sit, down, and stand with only hand signals even, I don't have to say them to her. I think with puppies that they are like little sponges that just soak up information.

I took Denny to his dog obedience class today and it was our second to last class of the session. We practiced all of the items that are on the canine good citizen test and Denny did very well on most of the items, but he definitely would have failed the test for the last item which is the supervised separation. In that segment of the test, the tester takes the dog's leash and the owner leaves the dog's sight. In this case, I walked out of the door and waited for thirty seconds. In the real test it is for three minutes. The dog is supposed to be relaxed and not freak out, cry, pull at the leash or any of that nonsense. Denny cried the whole time. I guess it is part of his whole coming from a bad situation thing. It is something for us to work on, to say the least. There were a couple of times when I had to loop Denny's leash around a bracket on the wall and go inside the "ring" to act as part of the crowd for the purposes of testing another dog. He was so funny in that he would jump up into the nearest chair to where he was tied off so that he would be high up enough that he could see me. What a cutie.

And as far as the birds go, Charley is entering his difficult 'teenage' stage and has been a bit of a pill lately and then there is Holly, our recent adoptee. She is warming up nicely to Andy but still is unsure of me. I am giving her the space she needs and the time she needs to feel comfortable, but I would like to be able to handle her as well. I was at the bird store today buying food for the two of them when the resident expert of the store said that she would be giving a bird behavior class at the beginning of June. I signed myself and Andy up for it knowing that we can use any help or wisdom we can get with the birds. That should be an insightful class.

Oh the joy of having a clean floor. It may not sound like a big deal, but when you have two messy parrots and six dogs in your house, one of those being a pissy little puppy, it is really a special thing to have a clean floor even for a few hours. Clean as in freshly steamed and with no one pooping, peeing, puking, dripping water, or throwing food on it. *Bliss*

Holly the cockatoo and Ramona the puppy are settling in to life at our house quite well. Holly remains quite suspicious of me, but I try to talk to her and interact with her as much as I can without making her uncomfortable. She seems to prefer Andy and he has been working with her every day so that she gets used to him. She lets him pet her, but isn't quite ready to be held yet. Almost, but not just yet. She is making progress with both of us, though.

And Ramona is doing really well. Her housetraing is coming along better than expected, and she is a smart little thing. I taught her over only a couple of hours how to go in and out of the dog door. She was a little scared of it at first, but now she runs in and out through it like a champ. This afternoon when I got home, I took all of the dogs out to pee. She peed and then we went inside and I started preparing the birds their afternoon meals. I noticed Ramona go over to the dog door and she went out all by herself. I walked over to the back door to watch what she was doing, and she went straight out to the yard and pooped! I was so proud. Usually it takes them much longer after learning how to use the dog door to realize that they can go out there on their own to poop or pee. And she is only on her fifth day ever of learning not to pee or poop inside the house. What an awesome little pup!

Today has been a big day for us. First, at close to midnight last night Andy came home from work to meet little Ramona, who has been doing just fantastically so far. For a puppy that has never been worked with at all on housebreaking she has been great, or we have just been *that* vigilant about taking her outside. In any case she is doing very well.

This morning we had dog training class for Denny, and we brought Ramona to sit outside the ring with Andy and observe because it is goood for her to be socialized. She was funny. She decided she did not like this one large doberman puppy that was there and barked her piercing little bark at him. She carried on for a while, then finally settled down. Denny was great in class again and won the contest for the fastest "sit." He can do better than he did, though, so we are going to work hard this week.

After we got back from class we started getting our furniture rearranged to make room for the next new arrival, the gorgeous cockatoo my aunt was bringing for us. My aunt and her significant other got to the house sooner than we expected and I went out to meet them and explain how we would bring Denny out on his leash to meet them first and give them treats and that they were to praise him. This is in an effort to keep Denny from wanting to nip at people that come over. As a rescue dog that had been through a lot when he came to us, he is very proptective of his home and family and kind of wants to bite visitors because he thinks they are trying to take him away from his home. That is why we started him in training classes. His instructor told us to give the visitors treats for him and it worked very well. Denny was thrilled to get praise, hot dog pieces, and cheese from them and was as good as gold. The trick worked well with the other dogs too, and they settled down a lot more quickly after they got their treats.

The new bird did well on her trip and they got her all set up in her cage. We all had lunch and she was doing fine and played a little with her toys, ate, and drank while they visited with us. Since they left, she has been a little reserved, but that is to be expected until she gets comfortable with us. She has been talking a little, very softly, but she is a quiet bird. I hope she will feel a little more comfortable tomorrow, because I would like to take her out of the cage and play with her a little. She is just a little too nervous right yet, so we talk to her through the cage. I opened the door of her cage to give her a little piece of cheese, but she was too suspicious, so I left it sitting on her perch. She came and got it after I left the room, though. Baby steps, right? She is darling.

So all in all, we are doing very well. While you would expect that our house would be utterly chaotic right now, it really isn't. Amazingly, things are quiet. Go figure.

I guess we are running a zoo here, after all. After some careful deliberation, Andy and I decided that we will be welcoming a new member of our family, a lovely Eleanora Cockatoo, also known as a medium sulfur crested. I am not sure yet when she will arrive, but we are looking forward to it. Interestingly, she is the same age as our Charley, an Eclectus parrot, and they both come from the same part of the world.

Currently her name is Harley, but that is so very similar to Charley that we might have to modify it a bit. I thought maybe I could drop one letter and call her Haley? She is very social and was raised with an African Grey parrot that escaped in January and has never been found. She is kind of unhappy without a bird friend, so my aunt thought of us and Charley and thought they might get along well. From what I hear from my aunt she is so well behaved that maybe she could give some lessons to Charley. She sounds like such a sweet little girl.

Things are mostly quiet around here. Cody has made a full recovery and is back to his perky little self. I have been taking Denny on a walk almost every day this week to practice what we learned in Saturday's training class.

And speaking of dogs, I have signed up to volunteer for the night shift on Saturday night at the house where all of the poodles from the puppy mill raid I posted about are being kept. It was initially 76 poodles, but there were even more puppies born yesterday. I am sure Andy is worried about me being around so many puppies because he knows how I am with them, that I love them so much I just want to take them all home, but I think I will be okay. And there is no taking these puppies home anyway until a judge decides who will take custody of them permanently anyway. It is probably a good thing for me at least. Oh, the little chubby puppies with their sweet little baloney breath. I can't wait to see them.

On another topic, what would you do if you were me- meaning you were slightly crazy- and someone offered to give you a cockatoo as a friend for your parrot? It is certainly something to ponder. Charley is great and all, but maybe he would benefit from some bird companionship. I am not sure if he even knows he is a bird now. I think he thinks he is a human child. Thoughts? The title of this post is what Andy said when I first asked him about it, but he is not opposed to the idea, it just caught him off guard a bit.

Our parrot Charley has always been a sort of secretive talker. He talks all the time, but rarely will talk if you are looking directly at him, preferring to yammer on when people are out of the room. He loves to yap when we are upstairs and we hear his silly "little girl voice" carrying up over the loft wall as he happily chatters away.

Tonight he surprised me, though. I had him out of his cage to play, just as is our routine every evening. He comes out of his cage and I put him on his play gym that hangs from the ceiling in my computer room, and he plays up there while I work on the computer or watch TV and hang out with him. He looks forward to this time we spend together every day. As I carried him out of the room on my arm after our play session was over he said "Come 'ere, Squirt" to one of the dogs in exactly my voice. I usually say that to Cody as we leave the room so he will come with us back into the living room and I sometimes say that to Charley when I want to pick him up. It was so cute, coming from Charley, and I have never really had him talk while I was holding him before. Maybe he is turning over a new leaf and will talk to people directly one day. I sure hope so.

Charley, my Eclectus parrot, has decided to share today's bath time with my readers. He loves to take baths, and if you have never seen a parrot take a bath, it is sort of interesting. Andy built the perch he is sitting on in the tub out of pvc pipe and some rubbery gray non-skid stuff so the perch isn't too slippery for him.

As you can see by my "about me" section, I have always loved birds, and always enjoyed watching them in the wild. I never really lived with a bird before until two years ago when we got Charley, our eclectus parrot. Since living with him, I have noticed that when I look at birds, I now look at them in a different way. I look at them more as individuals with unique personalities, as I know they are based on silly Charley. I never knew how sweet, sensitive, creative, and loving a bird could be, or that it could get mad, annoyed, or just plain needy.

There are not many people I would recommend a pet bird to. Not because they aren't great, but having a pet bird is a hell of a responsibility, almost like that of having a child. You have to be willing and able to put in a lot of time with the bird in order for it to be happy. One would think that a bird would be an easy pet because it lives in a cage, but for the bird to be happy and well adjusted, it needs to spend as much time out of its cage as possible. For your bird to be truly healthy, it needs to be fed a pelleted diet, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables daily. We give Charley fresh food and water twice a day in addition to his pellets. Seeds are full of fat and are nearly devoid of nutrients so they do not make a good diet for a bird, especially one that lives in captivity and isn't flying around burning off the fatty calories.

The picture in this post is of Charley, eating his afternoon meal, with his beak covered in food bits. He gets it all over himself but it makes him happy, so whatever. It makes me even happier now when I watch birds in the wild to know that they are not only beautiful creatures that are blessed with the ability to fly, but have their own interesting characteristics, and their own individual traits. I am glad to say that I actually "know" a bird, and am flattered that he is happy to "know" me.

Charley, our goofy bird, has figured out that you are supposed to say "bless you" after someone sneezes. It is so funny to hear him say it, and makes me think we must really sneeze excessively in our house for him to have picked that up already.

Little Annabel, the sweet poodle we rescued, has decided that she does not like being penned up. We had been putting her and Louie, the two youngest dogs, together in a huge open topped pen when we were not home so they wouldn't get into trouble. Louie has gone in the pen ever since he was a tiny puppy, and he actually likes it in there. He even goes in there and lays down in his little bed when he isn't feeling well. Annabel never really loved the whole pen thing, but she was okay to stay in there as long as Louie was with her. That is up until last week, when she figured out that she can jump right out of the pen. There is no keeping her in there anymore, she just won't have it. So now she and Louie get to stay out with the other dogs during the day. They are confined to the downstairs area by a gate at the bottom of the stairs and we close the bedroom doors to keep them out of there, but they have the run of the kitchen, living room, dining room and laundry, as well as access to the backyard via their dog door. So far it has gone well, but I am a little afraid we will come home one day to something that is destroyed. Oh well, dogs will be dogs.

Our parrot Charley has quite an extensive vocabulary of phrases and is always learning to say new things. Most of his new stuff is built on something he already knows; like he knew "What are you doing?" and then he learned "How are you doing?"

Every once in a while he busts out with something completely different, though. Last night while we were watching TV, I kept hearing him repeat the same thing over and over but I couldn't discern what it was. Andy turned down the volume on the TV, and he was the one who figured it out. He was saying, "you stink like fruit." We had a good laugh at that one.

Okay, yes, this is a weird thing for a bird to say, (or anyone for that matter) but we feed Charley a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables and he always seems to smell like it. So, I guess sometimes when I pick him up, I tell him he "stinks like fruit," but I never thought he would pick that up. Now he says it constantly. He is the best.

Charley was feeling exceptionally photogenic and decided to show off a little today. I swear, that bird has no idea that he is a bird. He thinks he is a little human boy. I never knew before Charley how very demanding birds are, but I would have to say now that they are even more needy than dogs. But what other pet can tell you that he loves you, or say "Hi Mommy" or "You're so pretty?" He is a lot of fun.

This morning Andy gave him some of one of his favorite foods, pomegranate. If you aren't familiar with pomegranates they are a red juicy fruit filled with little "beads" inside that you eat. The juice from them is bright red and stains. I went into the room where Charley's cage is just a little while ago and it looked like a murder scene- there was red juice all over the tile floor. He can spray it about ten feet from his cage but I have no idea how he does it. I think he is really proud of his food throwing and spraying abilities. I am forever picking pieces of fruit out of the dogs' coats on their backs where Charley throws it. He lures them over to the cage and then throws fruit at them. It looks like quite a good time.

So anyways, here are his pictures from his photo shoot today (click the pictures for big). He is a real ham and loves to have his picture taken. Sometimes he likes to try to bite the camera as well, but we are working on that. He says the craziest things and is always talking. Well, except when people come over, and he clams up and won't say a word, but that is beside the point. Before we had Charley, I always thought that birds were very interesting and neat pets, but I didn't realize that I could actually love a bird. It turns out that I can. I really love Charley and despite the fact that he is messy, needy and loud, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Today is Charley's 2nd hatchday, meaning his cute self broke out of the egg two years ago today. He was hand raised by a sweet couple who had to feed him every couple of hours for several months until he got old enough to be weaned. We got him when he was a four month old baby, in February of 2004. I had gotten the idea that I wanted a bird, and ran the idea past Andy. He thought it might be cool, so I spent several weeks doing research to try to find what kind of bird would be the best for us. We settled on an Eclectus parrot, but we were going to get a female, until we met Charley. The females of the species are bright red and blue, and the males are mostly green. Charley was the cutest sweetest thing, and had been raised well, so we decided to get him instead of a female. We already had a cage at home waiting for him, as well as toys, dishes, swings, etc.

That first day he was so timid, but very sweet. The only noise he made for quite a while was "haw." Whenever he would call out to us, we would say "hello" and he quickly learned to say it. After that we taught him "Hi Mommy," and "pretty bird." We haven't tried to teach him to say anything since then. We haven't had to, he just picks up things that we say a lot. Actually, things that I say a lot. He always wants to copy me. His current vocabulary consists of somewhere around sixty phrases, which is quite impressive. His voice is clear and childlike. I have included links to recordings I made with my iPod of Charley talking one morning. The recordings are several months old and he talks much better now, but you will get the idea. He is also shy in front of recording devices, so it is not his best talking. They are kind of quiet recordings, and they start off slow, but give them a chance. You won't hear anything until about 30 seconds into the recording, and a lot of it at the beginning is gibberish.

Click here to hear 'Charley Talking'
Click here to hear more 'Charley Talking'

Charley has learned a new phrase which he really likes. He says "green chicken" over and over. He got it from me, and I know it sounds funny, but I call all the dogs my "chickens" because of the way they flock around me, and naturally Charley had to be included as one of the "chickens." So I call him Green Chicken, and now he calls himself Green Chicken. He is so smart. Some of his other favorite phrases are "I got your foot" "whaddya doin'?" "no biting" and "look at you, you're so cute."

This morning I awoke to the sounds of my little black dog retching. Lovely. I ran over there and put his head over the tile of the bathroom floor as it is easier to clean puke off tile than carpet. He puked up a little bit, and then I got him to go downstairs to go outside. As I was coming down the stairs, he puked a little more by the back door. I said "eeeewwww" and from the covered bird cage across the room, I heard Charley say "eeeewwww" just like I said it. I had to laugh at that one.

My favorite bird, Charley.

Here is Charley watching me write tonight's post. He likes to sit on my arm.