The Birds

I usually forget we have birds until someone comes over and hears them shrieking and asks ‘do you have birds’ and I’m like…yeah, yeah we do.  Kind of like admitting we have black mold. Yeah, we do have birds. Not sure why. Don’t know how to get rid of them.

 Well, actually I do. Clean the oven with Easy Off.  Paint a wall with toxic paint. Let the dog eat them. But…I don’t do these things because there are family members that actually do like the birds and I like those family members.  So, basically, I just ignore them.

 They have the loveliest of bird houses. Once they’re gone I’ll use their birdhouse as decor.  But right now, that bird house is covered with bird poo. I had no idea how filthy and noisy those feathered fiends could be.  I had to remove any and all of my own decor from the bat cave because it was all covered with poo and feathers. Those birds kind of tarred and feathered my decor and ran it out of town.

To be fair, Mike and Lexie, and more recently, Mike, have taken very good care of the clean up.  I’ve never had to do a thing and I never smell anything rank coming out of that room.  At least not from the birds.

In the beginning, I actually had said yes to a little sweet budgie named Blueberry. That fell through.  How we ended up with four cockatiels was beyond me. Well we started out with two and Mike built them a birthing box. What did he think was going to happen?

The original pair,  Picasso and Lupin, sang the mating call one too many times and Lupin started laying eggs. Out of those eggs we got Zelda and Peaches.  Well….to make a long story even longer….the four of them were not getting along. Dad was pulling out mom’s feathers and mom was pecking at the babies.  We finally had to separate them. We had such a serious welfare case going on I almost had to bring in the Audubon society.  We finally decided to get rid of mom and Dad. When we still had the four birds it was a little bit like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

We found a good home for them with someone who desperately wanted them and before you know it the new owners texted and said they had taught Picasso to sing “When the Saints Come Marching in”.  WHAT-EVA

We have a bit of a gender identity crisis going on since the babies were given girls names and they turned out to be males. I heard them singing the mating song and I yelled up to Mike – What IS going on up there???  He said relax,  they are both boys, they just learned that song from mom and dad before we rehomed them. Poor little orphans.

Now we have a bit of a jealousy issue going on between the pup and the birdies.  Those birds got very jealous when we brought Ollie home and noticed he was getting all the attention.   Truth be told, I didn’t think they were that aware or sensitive…to anything.  Mike lets them out of the cage every now and then to fly around and be free and they just taunt Ollie.  One of these days, he’s going to snap their heads off and that will be the end of that.