New Family Members

This year for Christmas we decided to get the boys a bird. I thought it would be a good way for them to learn some responsibility, to have something to work with train, and to give some connectedness or permanency to us living here. Honestly I wish we had done it a year ago. A bird turned into three birds, but that's okay. It wasn't quite like the cute little puppy wrapped in a pretty box with a bow on top, but thankfully they were still excited.

We are now the proud owners of three parakeets - Snowflake (white with a blue breast), Pepper (green body with a yellow head), and Peder (gray with a purple breast), who is named after PDR's initials. I think they are finally adjusted to new home and are slowly losing their fear of us. Yesterday Snowflake ate some millet off a branch I was holding, so that was definitely a moment of success. She/he seems to be more dominant and can be quite a squawker at times. Pepper seems more reserved and a follower, but is also a little more skittish. Peder is an acrobatic maniac. I think he'll be quite fun to train once he gets to that point, but I also think it might take a while. He likes to hide in the box he came in, which was left on the bottom of his cage, but when he leaves it he chews, bites, climbs, flips, and jumps. He attacks his mirror and its beads with a vengeance. I hope he doesn't treat our fingers similarly!

There was one hiccup along the way. Peder the First had to be returned to the pet store after we realized his persistent diarrhea was not a result of stress, but probably the result of something more serious which he brought with him from the pet store. He was acting normally, it seemed, but we became fairly convinced he couldn't survive very long with his digestive issues. We called the pet store after the Christmas holidays, which here means the 27th, and they told us we had to wait until the manager was there on Monday. With the fear of infecting the other birds and possibly even us (who knew they can have a nasty bacteria humans can pick up?), we decided if nothing else, J would just leave him at the store and buy a new one at another pet store. Thankfully, though with much apparent frustration on their part, the store did let them exchange the bird and P was able to choose one who looked very much the same, just with darker colors. So this new maniacal Peder is the second, but P seems to be even more thrilled with him than he was with the first one. That was certainly a relief because of all the boys to be the most traumatized by needing to return their bird, he would probably be it. We did explain the situation to him and he did agree with our decision, but I was still nervous about the outcome.

They're adding their pleasant, and with more than one sometimes not so pleasant, chirps and squawks to our kitchen/living room and I'm enjoying the sight and presence of a living creature in the house again. Birds are a great addition because their upkeep is fairly simple, they're inexpensive, and they can be left alone here and there. Hopefully this experience will help us to discover if we are, in fact, prepared to take the leap for a dog in the future!