Beaker the Birdie

About three weeks ago I was taking the plastic winter seal off of the windows. I looked outside, and saw something odd on the ground. After a moment or two I realized that it was about a 2-day old bird.

Being the nature boy I of course had to go check it out. Yep. It was a bird. I couldn't find the nest at the time, so I dug a little hole and put him in it, to keep him warm. I figured either mom and dad were killed (there were a ton of adult feathers on the ground) or if they weren't, they'd come back for it.

Nupe. Nuttin. And I of course told Leah, who is the bird-queen. This, despite my nature-boy instincts of letting nature take its course, resulted in us bringing the bird in. The thing was shivering and barely moving...probably very close to death.

That was three weeks ago. After Leah handfeeding the thing for weeks he has grown up a bit. Now I have a fully feathered avian friend who won't leave me alone. Currently he is preening himself whilst comfortably sitting on my leg. He also likes to preen my ear (?) and the back of my neck. Soaring through the house terrorizing the cat is high on his list too.

Mojo (cat) is not quite sure what to think of this thing. He watches, wide-eyed, and you can see the hunting instinct behind those big black doll's eyes. Suddenly the bird will make an abrupt movement and the cat will run away.

I won't mention what species he is...it may or may not be illegal to keep said birdie. Nonetheless, he is pretty much here to stay. I did eventually find the nest and it appears that mom and dad either kicked him out or he fell out, because they came back. (there was another baby in the nest).

The bird has been named Beaker, after my favorite muppet of all time. He kind of makes "mee mee mee mee" sounds just like Beaker did on the Muppet show. Beaker is of course confused and probably sees me as Dad and Leah as Mom, but that is ok.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a bird hater. Yes, I hate Leah's parakeets because they are noisy, and I classify them as "non-interactive" pets. Yes, there are pet-interaction ratings.

* Non interactive: they sit in a cage and want nothing to do with you. Boring. Waste of money imo.

* Interactive, high-maintenance: you can do things with these pets. They'll play with you or be your friend. But they require a lot of care. Dogs that need to be walked, for example. Not high on my list, but acceptable.

* Interactive, low-maintenance: Same as above, but they just do what they want when they want. It's a bit of a trade off...if the pet doesn't want to play or be around here, the pet goes somewhere else. Cats fall into this category. My favorite category.

Beaker is definitely an interactive pet. Relatively low maintenance, especially seeing how I don't know much about birds so Leah takes care of it anyway ;)

As a matter of fact he is so interactive that he is currently cleaning the hair on the back of my neck. It was quite the effort to persuade him to get off my keyboard. He was quite comfy there, but this means I can't type...

Meee meee meee!!!