If you are a regular reader, you know by now, once I get hooked on something I sometimes go a little overboard. Well, what you probably don’t know about me is I used to be a “bird lady”.
Yes, at one point we had 13 parakeets and I let them fly around the house free. Oh, so wacko, now when I think back to it. Anyway you are probably wondering how does one become a “bird lady”? The story goes like this.
I grew up having a parakeet and knew they were super messy but I loved my pretty blue bird named “cupcake”. So when Trinity was a little girl, she wanted a pet and I agreed to a parakeet. We went off the the pet store and came home with a pretty blue bird named “Harley”, who we thought was a female. Soon after, my nephew, who is the same age as Trinity, seemed interested in getting a bird too. I asked permission to buy him one and my sister agreed. We bought him a yellow and green bird who we thought was a male and he named him “Jasper”.
Every time we were at my sisters I noticed Jasper looked kinda sad and skinny. After several months her family lost interest in the bird and I offered to take Jasper and put him with Harley. We thought they would be happier together and I never imagined little baby birdies would be in my future. Well, they instantly loved being together in the same cage and appeared to be rather smitten with one another. Within a few months, 2 bird eggs appeared in the cage. Now this is when my bird obsession officially started.
We were all so excited! I rushed out and bought a book on parakeets and started researching how to prepare for the births. The funny thing is we realized we had the sexes mixed up. Jasper was the female, not Harley. Soon after the first 2 eggs hatched and both birds survived, 9 EGGS appeared in the bottom of the cage. This is when everything got serious. I went to the Magnolia Bird Farm in Anaheim and bought a huge black metal stand that held 3 cages. The bird man told me I had to separate the birds into even numbers or they may fight and gang up on one another. This was going to be a little difficult since we had an even number of birds.
Oh well, I bought the 3 story cage, a 5 gallon bag of food, a case of millet, and 100 of those things they scrape their beak on. The bird man told me I could train the babies if I started soon after they were born. After all 9 hatched and survived, I decided to start training the little ones by picking them up and petting them and let them fly free around the house. Lou was really good at picking them up and holding them but I was always hurrying around so I just let them out every day. No real training, like I had time to train 11 birds! Of course it was a little scary when someone entered the house and had to duck because the birds would fly right by their head as a greeting. They then started going under the beds and flying into the bathrooms and pooping on my crown molding. That is when I decided I had enough of their freedom. I returned them all to the cages and decided to pull the 3 tiered cage outside every morning so they could have fresh air and bring it back in for the night.
In and out twice a day, sweeping, sweeping and more sweeping. This went on for a couple of years even though the bird seed was starting to overwhelm my cleaning schedule when WE GOT MICE in the house. The exterminator told me mice loved bird seed and that was the end of the birds. I brought them to the Magnolia Bird Farm and sold them to the owner along with the cage and all the other left over supplies. He paid me some money and said he would sell them to another nice family. And that was the end of my “bird lady phase” only to be replaced by my “poodle phase”.
Happy Wednesday!!!
