Seriously the greatest bird you'll ever know.

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:17:11 GMT

The rules are easy, just post 10 things that recently made you happy! Then tag 10 (or six or whatever) people and force them to post this meme on their LJs. Because it is good. Everyone needs a little happiness once in awhile.

1. My Man!
2. my polly dolly
3. waffles
4. pooping on the farthead
5. crankygirlie
6. matthew
7. SG-1 (isn't teal'c dreamy?)
8. breakfast
9. lunch
10. dinner

also:

Stupid human.

ALERT ALERT

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:14:57 GMT

ZOMG THERE IS A SQUIRREL OUTSIDE!!!!!!!

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:17:43 GMT

Today Niko tried to mess with me when I was on my boing. So I pooped on his head. That'll teach him.

Writer's Block: The Nose Knows

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:57:38 GMT

What is your favorite smell? What does it remind you of?

View 282 Answers

Waffles. It reminds me of waffles.

The intruder tries to SNUGGLE with me!

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:48:15 GMT

If I could get any further away on that perch, I would.

Tiny update

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:44:32 GMT

Yeah, how's that regular updating working out for me?

Micah's had an interesting month.

First of all, Micah became a pretty damn excellent flier. She's become very independent now, and flies where she wants to go quite frequently. It's very nice, because she's gotten into a routine where she'll actually fly to her boing to poop before bed, and then eat a little bit and put herself to bed. It's nice to not have to ferry her around everywhere.

How-EV-er, we got a little intruder. The Intruder is a natural flier, having never been clipped in his whole 5 years. He is the same species of bird she is, a gold cap conure. The entire flock decided HE WAS A DEVIL BIRD. Screamy, yelly, bitey, attackey! Hates strangers, didn't like being in his cage, didn't play with toys, didn't use perches. HOY. He annoyed the crap out of her.

They don't hate one another, but they aren't best pals either.

I used a lot of mixed tense regarding the Intruder because we clipped his wings last week and the change is remarkable. He is no longer as loud, he cannot fly to attack people, he likes the cage we got him (he didn't like his cages really, and it was tough to get him to sit in them), he sits on perches and he plays with toys. He has taken after Micah in that if there's nothing to do with the people, there is defaulting to sleeping. Not what I want, but it sure as hell is better than defaulting to screaming.

They flew together at their first week at fly group and it got Micah to fly more because she was competing with him a bit. Since then, though, she's been back to her old habit of flying like a woodstock helicopter or something. Not the most confident of flights. A few scuffles over who gets to sit on what where.

Since he's had his wings clipped, he wants to be more friendly with her, attempting to snuggle up to her several times and asking to be preened. They're both very new at this kind of interaction so it's all a little shaky and rough, but that's ok. No one's lost an eye yet. Ha. We'll definitely be watching THAT stuff pretty closely. Please, darling, not that close to the eye!!

However it is so very sweet to see him try to snuggle her. Sometimes she's not expecting it, so when he pushes in to snuggle her, he nearly body-checks her off her perch.

Micah's fuzz is actually very slowly progressing, but it seems stable. She's got some nice thick down on one side of her. So, maybe ever so slowly we'll get more down on the other half of her chest and over her legs. I can only hope, considering the vet says there's more chance that she won't grow any more feathers due to damage to the follicles. :( I'm still pulling for down, at LEAST.

Micah's real parents Jennifer and Neil came by this month and were able to say hi and love on the nirds. The Intruder bird tried to bite Neil several times. :/

Jennifer and Neil got to come to flight group for a few minutes. It was brief but nice.

Micah has been going to Matthew's office with him... he even has a cheap cage there to settle her in, which she loves. Apparently, she has an all new love interest. She displays for him, tries to make or display a nest in the corner of the cage, that kind of thing... She's always happy to see him. Unfortunately, she was just so excited, she pooped. A lot. So... Yugh. Apologies, Matthew's co worker.

The thing that made me think of wanting to say anything is that when I walked downstairs to get a glass of water, Micah greeted me in this tiny, happy "grefrooforofrroo" noise. She tends to give me a happy noise when she hears me come down the first time. However, if I push it and try to hang out next to her cage or talk to her, her noises get angry, "FWEEEEEEE!" The devil bird in the cage next to her squeals angrily at me, too. Let sleeping birds lie!

Perhaps photos later.

Birdie interaction

Thu, 24 May 2007 22:10:58 GMT

Micah hss lots of news, but I only have the energy to talk about one thing today.

Today she actually interacted with another bird! She usually completely ignores any birds not in flight. She yells her head off when the macaws are flying but is otherwise very nonplussed by her fellow flighted creatures.

Today she hung out a bit with a nanday conure. She's hung out with this conure before and hardly even acknowledged his presence before. Today, well... It wasn't the very best interaction ever. She reached over with her beak open, like she wanted to chew on his feathers. Then she noticed his toes, and asked, with a beakful of toe, "Do your toes taste good?" The correct answer, of course, was, "OFF MY TOES, BITCH!"

She also reacted to a blue and gold macaw. She does NOT LIKE Jessie. The feeling is mutual, Jessie wants to Kill All Conures. Micah flew to Debbie and Jessie was with Debbie. Micah landed on Debbie's shoulder and then squeak-bonked at Jessie. Ha.

Oh one other thing. Micah flew "down" today. I forgot about the idea that "down" would be different than "up." Up is easy! Down, not so much. We should practice flying Micah down the stairs or something. So next week's fly group, hopefully we can get her to fly down from the loft area several times, so she gets used to flying down. That'll be important if she ever flies up into a tree.

I also heard about a sixty acre soccer field with roads that are miles away from the soccer field. It seems like it'd be a great place to teach Micah about these funny things called "drafts" that happen outside. Wind!! :O Birds can go a lot further with a nice draft, so hopefully we can teach her how to handle changing drafts.

Basically, I want to fly her in a lot of different situations and get her recalling in as many situations as possible so if anything should ever happen, I could recover her easily.

Plus, the last thing I'd want is for her to fly away into a situation she didn't know how to handle. One huge fear of mine is her flying out into a heavy automobile traffic area. Cars make weird drafts, and I'm not sure she knows how to handle cars, other than trying to get into them to go places. There's really no way to practice dealing with cars, of course, but we can practice dealing with drafts.

It's a very scary world for a little companion bird who has never lived in the wild! Outside birds know how to handle cars, drafts and predators. Little Micahbird doesn't know any of these things. :( Poor little Micahbird depends on us to keep her safe. Sometimes that makes me feel funny.

Funny like, it's such a huge responsibility. It's so bizarre to me how we have taken a wild thing and made it totally... well, we don't make it not wild, she's still a wild animal. But we've taken away all the advantages to being wild. And I feel funny-weird because, well, what if I can't keep her safe? What if something happens and she gets away from me somehow, in spite of all I'm trying to do to keep her from getting away? I can hope that all the things I've tried to teach her are enough to keep her safe...

But I feel like a parent sometimes. It's scary. I'm not going to do it "in real life" with a real baby. No way.

All right, now we've stopped talking about birds.

More about Micah and her attack-bird antics later.

Picture post!

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 05:23:53 GMT

This is my home!

I didn't do it! I'm not really locked up here most of the time but for reasons I do not disclose, I really enjoy being in here and refuse to come out on my own, even if the door is open, I know how to fly, and I really need to poop. Did I mention, I refuse to poop in here?

I got new food recently. This stuff is too big for me to chomp normally, so I have to hold it and chew it piece by piece.

Hey... I think that thing is clicking at me...

Okay, I'll play this game.

I really love this game.

I'm adorable.

Micah flies so well now!

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 02:22:38 GMT

This video shows Micah flying to her cage and to her boing. We still have to work on recall and other commands as well as give her practice on flying in a straight line with more control and landing with more control, she's already worlds away from where we started.

Her first flights, when we could convince her to let go of our hands (mind you, we started out having to literally toss her into the air because she had NO idea what we wanted from her), was wild and panicked. I felt horrible in the beginning, to tell you the truth. She was obviously scared. Who would have thought flying would scare a bird? But she was scared, and her panicked flights were totally off the wall. She was EVERYWHERE.

Then, landing, well... she didn't so much land as hover over something until it either came to her or she slowly managed to lower herself onto it. This is a great alternative to simply smacking into things and I'm grateful she was able to do it, but it wasn't at all what I would call "landing!"

Now, she has learned that when we put her on our thumbs, we're going to ask her to fly somewhere. She's still really dependent on us to put her on her thumb, unless she's got an URGENT need to be somewhere else.   I've been working on making sure she knows that when she is on my index finger she STAYS there, and we're also working on ways of teaching her that it is ok to fly from, say, her boing to her cage when we tell her to.   Really, I just want her to fly where I tell her to, so if something bad should happen and she flies outside when I don't intend her to, I can recall her from wherever she's gotten herself.

Already, she has learned what I mean when I say, "fly to your cage," "fly to your poo palace," "fly to your boing," and "fly where you want."

If I just say, "go! fly!" she will usually fly to her cage or poo palace. She will also fly where I point.

The most interesting part is that it appears it is not just coincidence that she flies where I ask her to, evidenced by what happens when I tell her, "fly where you want."    When we were at fly group, she desperately wanted to fly to Debbie, but I kept asking her to fly to her poo palace. She would sometimes fly straight to her poo palace and sometimes fly over to Debbie, consider her briefly, then readjust her course and continue flying to her poo palace.   Then I said, "fly where you want!"    She flew straight to Debbie and landed on her!

Of course, once when I said, "fly to your poo palace," she inexplicably flew to the big perch with the blue and gold macaw that would definitely love to "kill a conure".   The macaw was a good bird, though.   It scared the bejeezus out of me.   I kept asking her, "why? why? why did you fly there? why?"   She's never flown to that bird or that perch before. Sheesh.

Anyway, she's doing really well with the flying and I hope she'll continue to improve and by summertime she'll be recalling or just flying when we tell her to, where we tell her to.   It would put my mind at ease a bit, knowing that she might fly down to me from a tree or wherever she might get herself.   I guess she's flown to a tree before she came to live with us, and fire fighters had to rescue her! Silly bird. I bet she loved the fire fighters, though!

In other news, one of the green winged macaws flew onto Micah's perch for no good reason (it was "visit birds who probably won't like you landing next to them" day I guess), and I ran over, yelping, and someone said, "Oh, Molly won't hurt Micah!"   I said, "It's not Micah I'm worried about!"   Sure enough, though Molly was whisked away quickly, Micah was pissed and was going to "kill a green wing."   Micah, you are a little bird.   ....With a sharp beak.   The Macaws have big strong beaks, but conures little beaks are sharp, sharp, sharp!

Good thing this doesn't happen often and we're always watching these birds closely.   We kinda have to, with the Eclectus always almost literally underfoot.

Picture post instead of a wordy post

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:02:52 GMT

Micah says, "I has a piece of leather!"

I have stuff to post, things to say, but I'm too tired right now.

So, here's some bad quality but cute photos of Micah on her boing and on my computer:

I'm fuzzy and out of focus but I'm cute:

I'm even fuzzier and more out of focus and it's a terrible picture, but I'm STILL cute:

This was all during her OH MY FOOT period. She wouldn't stand on it. I could tell you why but then I'd have to kill you.

Either that or I'm just really tired and lazy right now.

And here's pictures of Micah's new friends:

That is, from bottom left going clockwise: Jessie the blue and gold macaw, Olly the green wing macaw, Bart the green wing macaw and Rudy the eclectus.

These are four green wing macaws that regularly come to fly group. Micah loves the big birds. :)

Micah the fly girl!

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:41:34 GMT

Micah has been going to an indoor fly group recently. We just started, and we have missed several times due to (my) illness or being out of town, but we've been practicing some things at home and Micah enjoys our time there.

First, let me update on the flight thing. When Micah molted all her clipped flight feathers out, it was my intention to clip them again due to her love of the outdoors, our small house and the fact that Jennifer always clipped her and I doubted Micah was a competent flyer and feared for her safety. However, it was right after her big molt she started laying eggs. The longer she had her full flight feathers, the worse I felt about taking them away from her.

Then, one day I realized how truly sedentary she is. Her main daily activity is sitting in her polly dolly cuddling it. Most birds spend time flapping their wings as they play with their toys. She does not do that. The only times she flaps her wings on her own is when she is on a perch chewing on something and loss her balance OR if she was upset with me, she would climb up to the corner of her cage, grab hold of the bars on the side and top, and flap away. Flapping always gets her some attention, so she learned if she wanted to get me over to her cage in a hurry, she just has to start flapping her wings like a crazy bird. Other than that, Micah's in-cage activities centered around cuddling and preening her polly dolly, eating, ringing her bell, preening and sometimes chewing on the toys and perches.

We took her to a vet I don't really like, and the vet scared the poop out of us saying stuff like Micah has little tiny birdy cataracts, which is to be expected, but only of a bird much older than she is. The vet basically made us believe Micah was creaky and unhealthy and whatnot, which is not really true. She's a healthy and happy bird.

BUT she is sedentary, and though right NOW she appears healthy and happy, if she continues spending the majority of her time just sitting around, she won't stay healthy and won't live as long.

Now, I have made a point of exercising her as much as I could by spinning her around and letting her flap her wings (an activity that is also done to tell her to/help her to poop), but there's only so much of that she'll take, and Matthew is a big sucker. I ask him, "Did you exercise her?" and he replies, "She doesn't like it!" And I groan. Anyway, this is not really enough.

So, at some point, I thought, well... crap. How do I get her more active? She doesn't really like to climb all over the place. If given a series of perches or other climby-type objects, she'll pick one she likes and sit. And stay.

Normal birds in the wild get all their exercise via flight. They fly all over the place all the time. Wings are to birds as legs are to humans. Of course. Everyone knows this. But many clip their companion bird's wings.

The problems I had with Micah flying were mainly her lack of skill introducing possible danger, our small house introducing birdy dangers and the results of a suddenly spooked Micah while outdoors. Birds just take off when they're frightened. Micah has ended up in trees before and not easily retrieved. We live in a pretty urban area. There are more dangers than just trees. She also has no idea that not all people are nice.

Every one of those problems can be overcome with training. The goal being that we train Micah how to fly skillfully and to return to us when we call her.

The problem with THAT is, how on earth would I train Micah to fly?? My house is WAY too small for that. And, I didn't even know where to start! I was about to decide to clip her wings come spring when we found a group of people who fly their birds weekly in the Lake City Community Center. Which is right by my house!

SO.

That gives us an opportunity to teach her to fly, give her good exercise every week at minimum, give her socialization with other birds and humans and hopefully give us some good methods of training.

When we first started going, Micah would not even flap her wings when we tried to run her around. There's a lovely cockatoo who is not flighted due to abuse by prior owners, so his foster mom runs him around in a circle and he flaps his wings. Micah took a HUGE liking to this woman (which is unusual because she's the archetype of the shape and size of people she Does Not Like), so this lady tried to do the same run-around with Micah. Micah just hung on tight and sat.

Micah would NOT let go of us to fly. She was excited to see other birds fly, but she was scared to fly herself.

Whenever we finally managed to launch her into the air, her flight was almost panicked - she would fly VERY fast, and often had to loop around and hover to get to her destination. This is the same way she would fly at home when she decided to fly at home. Which is why we didn't want to try to teach her to fly at home - she flies FAR too fast and I was very afraid she would lose control and slam into something and injure herself quite badly.

In the few weeks since we started going to the fly group and practicing things at home, Micah has changed a lot! We've taught her that if she is sitting on our thumb, she flaps her wings. We want to teach her that if we put her on our thumb we want her to fly, but we'll take what we can get for now. We have been practicing with the concept of, "Birds use their wings when they want to go somewhere!" So instead of just ferrying Micah around wherever she wants to go all the time, sometimes we will instead pick her up, put her on our thumb, and she will flap her wings... and so long as she is flapping her wings, we will walk her to her destination. If she stops flapping her wings, we stop moving. Then when we get to our destination, she gets a little tiny treat and a lot of praise.

Sometimes, we will make her fly to her cage when she wants to go. She can't hold on to our arms very well, so we try to put her on our arm (it is difficult!), and then with a little movement of our arm, she loses her footing and flies to her cage. Then we make a big deal out of it, clapping and cheering and giving her a little tiny treat.

Over the weeks, her flying has become markedly less panicked. She doesn't flap her wings as quickly, so her progress to her cage is more reasonable, she doesn't need to loop around, and she doesn't seem upset by it. There have been times when I made her fly to her cage that she was scared by the experience and it broke my heart. She makes this little trilling noise when she is afraid, and she made it once when I made her fly to her cage, and I almost cried I felt so bad.

Anyway, right now her landings are okay because she can hover REALLY well, but it takes her some time to actually land. If she didn't know how to hover, she would be crashing a lot. I know that soon she will figure out how to land smoothly, but I haven't seen any improvement there yet.

I think the big difference I see is that she has immediately begun to grasp the concept of "birds use their wings to do important things!" Now when she is on a perch chewing on something (the poo palace and the bathroom shower perch both have chewy things in sort of inconvenient locations that require her to bend over to chew them) and begins to lose her balance, she no longer actually begins to slip and then panic and flap her wings. NOW, she extends her wing and balances herself to avoid slipping. I had never seen her use her wings for that before.

Another thing Matthew and I both noticed was Micah has started to settle down again. After she laid her eggs, she hasn't been quite the same. A bit more aggressive, demanding, anxious. Today she was like the bird we knew before she started laying eggs! Maybe it's just because better weather is coming again, it's warmer and prettier and the hours of light are longer, but it could also be better exercise make for a healthier, happier bird. It makes sense.

In other news, Micah likes the dryer. Specifically, being IN the dryer.

And for your video enjoyment, Micah clicking to me from inside the dryer.

Some more photographs of me when I was laying eggs

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:33:28 GMT

This is when I had all four eggs! See what a good mama I was?

The Micahbird Report

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:23:03 GMT

Long time no see, LiveJournal!

Since I've last written, Micah has returned to her more or less normal routine since laying eggs. She ended up laying four eggs and then once she realized she could not sit on them all at once, she stopped laying eggs and everything went back to normal. I took away the eggs after she had sat on them for a while, she watched me and knew what I was doing when I took each one (I did it one at a time over the span of a week or so), and just let me do it. I think she was tired of it and knew they weren't going to hatch but still felt compelled to sit on them anyway.

She grew her toetalonails (I just made that up) waaaay out and was poking everyone senseless so we took her to see a new vet to get them trimmed, since her previous and well-loved vet stopped seeing exotics. She did not like the new vet at all and I'm not sure I did either. She told us a lot of odd things, made a lot of incorrect assumptions and seemed to jump to a lot of conclusions I couldn't trust. We may be taking her to a well-recommended vet in Bothell next time she needs a vet, but if all else fails, we'll make the trek all the way down to Des Moines for her good vet Dr. Onorati. I really hate driving all that way, though. Especially on the freeway. I am constantly worried about, "What if we get into an accident? What if the airbags deploy?" The fright alone could hurt her. I'm a huge worrywart. Huge worrywart.

Micah has continued the super big uber huge love for our neighbor Maureen, and recently began going through the motions of regurgitating for her, which I interrupted because I don't think Maureen would appreciate bird spit-up as much as Micah would, should the situation be reversed. Micah would be thrilled if Maureen would chew up some nice banana chips and spit them up for her, but I just can't imagine that kind of thing ever happening. Just, you know, uh... doubtful.

William also recently warmed up to Micahbird, which was met with enthusiasm unlike anything I've ever seen. Micah now wants all of William's babies. Too bad William doesn't go for the girls. Or the birds. Or the girl birds. Micah has yet again fallen in un-reciprocated love. Oh well.

Again with the love, recently there was an enormous wind storm here in Washington state, and we lost power for about two days. We took Micah to my mom and dad's house. There's HUGE love from my mom towards the bird, and there's HUGE love from Micah towards my father. I see a love triangle here. Micah would happily sit with my Dad, rubbing him with her beak, aaaaaaaall day. She really enjoyed the little vacation, spending the two days with mom and dad. She was very disappointed to return home to boring old Matthew and me.

Then, Emily came over and Micah was happy again. Despite Emily's petite frame (Micah can normally be counted on to dislike petite females), Micah loooooves Emily. Emily stayed for a couple of days and Micah was very happy about that.

Today, Micah is finally settling down and resting after all the excitement. And then it will be Christmas. So much for routine!

Micah's flight feathers have finally all grown completely out. Since it's winter, I've avoided clipping them and have been happy to see her occasionally use them to get her where she wants to be. She flies a bit like Woodstock from the Peanuts. When she has a destination in mind, she does pretty well. When she has no idea where she's going, well, that's different. She tends to fly in circles and land on or in something random, like the bathroom sink. The toilet lid is always down now. :) It makes me nervous to take her outside, though. Since it's cold, you would think it would be no problem, but Micah wants to go outside no matter what the weather is. Once outside, well, then it's a different story. If it's raining, it's completely offensive. What happened to conures loving water? It's completely untrue with this bird. She hates the rain. She distrusts the little mister I sometimes try to use on her and seems to resent being damp. The shower just kind of pisses her off, so we only wet her down if she has a lot of pin feathers with shafts which haven't gone away on their own. Once she gets all wet, they come off easily. But! She takes baths in her water dish. Maybe she likes it because she doesn't actually get all that wet. She gets everything else soaked, though.

The Christmas tree is standing in the place where her cage was sitting before so now she is by the window on the south wall, between the kitchen table and the kitchen counter/bar.

She is growing a lot of down on the right half of her belly, including the beginnings of a pantleg. I'm relieved. The down comes out quite easily, still, but she seems to be leaving it alone for the most part. I hope she starts growing the normal colored feathers over it soon, and growing the down on her back and other half. She looks so cold when she insists on going outside!

I tried to take photographs of her fuzzy-ness, but it's just my camera phone for now. No el jay cuts for you!

That last one is from today, it was sunny, cold and windy out (windy, again? noooo!) and she desperately wanted to go outside. We likes to try to go to Maureen's house, but M isn't home during the day! We say hi to the dogs instead. Despite disliking dogs, she likes Paco and Chloe.

So, yeah, these photos are terrible, but I don't even know where the real camera is.

We had tried to cut back on the fat, by cutting out the Nutriberries for a while. We were giving her banana chips instead, which seemed like a great idea until I realized she was acting a bit more hormonal, so I checked the package again. Lo and behold, the damn banana chips have a ton of fat. How can banana chips have a lot of fat!? They must fry them. So we cut back on the banana chips too. We were giving them to her too frequently since we thought they were just fine. Bah. Now we give little bits of her favorite cereal. I checked that one, very low in fat. More fat seems to give her more energy, more pep and more feathers, though, so ... we'll see. She's not on the high potency formula food anymore, just the regular food.

When she's on a lower fat diet, without the high potency formula (which has about twice the fat of the normal formula) and without any treats like Nutriberries or whatnot, she tends to be a lot more sedentary, she sits quietly in her Polly Dolly a lot, doesn't really want to come out of her cage very often, and doesn't seem to grow many feathers.

When we give her a moderate amount of fat, she seems very peppy and active and wants to come out of the cage and hang out with us and sit on our computers and sing and dance around and normal regular birdy things.

When she gets too much fat, she is hyperactive, won't stay in her cage or perches and constantly dances around, asking to go outside all the time or wanting to see new people constantly, and driving me absolutely batshit with "ok ok ok ok ok ok ok" over and over again. She also 'backs up' on things. But she grows a ton of feathers! They pop out everywhere, especially on her head, like crazy!

So, how to find the balance? Rar.

I think that's really all the report I have in me right now. She's been a pretty happy bird but I get all worrywarty and wonder if I'm doing right by her sometimes. I wish she could say more than 'ok', 'thank you' and 'hello' and just tell me how she's doing, so I can relax a bit. I'm always watching her closely... birds are secretive when they don't feel well, so the only way to tell a bird is sick is to recognize changes in a birds behavior and elimination. I am always watching her closely to see if I can tell if she is happy, sad, sick, lonely, annoyed, whatever.

I think I annoy her a lot. :) I ruffle her feathers too much and try to play too many games with her (I say, "WHEEEE!" and hang her upside down, she seems to like it) and just generally bug her a lot, I think. I probably wake her up from naps, take her out of her cage when she wants to be in, put her back in her cage when she wants to be out, etc. I think she likes everyone more than me because I fuss over her so much. Then again, I get to do things like clean her beak off and stuff. She still doesn't really let me help her get the feather sheaths off of her pinfeathers, but maybe sometime.

Having a bird in the house is a weird experience, I have to say. I've always wanted a conure, but I sometimes start to think that when Micah goes home again, I may not get a bird. I'll miss her a lot, but the truth is, well, there's a couple of things here. One, I'm not sure I really want to continue having the huge responsibility that this is. I don't have kids for the same reason. I don't think I'd be a good mom, not because I'd be bad for the kids, but it'd be bad for me. I worry too much and fuss too much and it kind of becomes overwhelming - I let the kids run my life. Birds are the equivalent of toddlers. Eric (who she decided recently she doesn't like, which is weird, because that MORNING she liked Eric and then in the afternoon didn't like him) remarked, "It's just like having a kid, isn't it?" I said, "That's exactly what it's like." Sometimes. Not always. But the funny thing is, just like most parents, I say the same thing, I can't imagine life without her. I'll be sad when she goes home and I'll miss her. I love her very much, and as Matthew says, "Everything Micah does is cute." I really love her, but I'm just not sure I can handle the thought of being responsible for a life in this way. I can barely handle my own life.

The other thing is, well... I look at her and I think, "Birds don't belong in houses in cages!" Birds belong outside where they can fly around wherever they want. Where no one will clip their wings. Micah needs a lot more exercise than she's getting. I'm trying to think of good ways of providing it, but nature provides it for her birds by having them fly all the time. It's great exercise. Birds aren't supposed to want to sit in their cage cuddled up with their Polly Dolly all day. Micah has been quiet as a mouse behind me in her cage, sitting on her perch, cuddling the dolly. She's napping or just resting or whatever. She is a sedentary bird. I take her out of her cage and exercise her myself. Even though she CAN fly, she doesn't do it very often. It's not all that safe to fly in here anyway. It just seems... wrong, somehow. Micah is a happy bird, but I can't help but feel that if she were 'home' in South America flying around with a big flock of birds just like her, she'd be the happiest.

Obviously, a pet/companion bird will never be happy in the wild because these birds now desire and depend on the attention of humans and will become despondent without it. So I would never think that releasing a pet bird is a good idea, but the whole pet bird industry is just a little weird. Birds are wild animals! It's not like dogs or cats. They belong outside flying around.

The sad thing is, birds like Micah are becoming extinct. So someday, the only gold capped conures you may find anymore will be captive bred companion birds. In that way, I should be very grateful for the companion bird industry - it's saving these species. But it is also changing their lives forever. I'm not sure I can really feel completely comfortable with it. I may still someday have another bird, but right now I am looking at Micah and thinking, "I know I could be doing more for her somehow but I just don't know how!" She could be getting more exercise or be happier somehow, but... how? Within the constraints of a normal busy life, how can I replace mother nature?

I'm getting too philosophical in this Micah Report, but I guess it's been a long time coming. :)

To summarize, things seem pretty ok, Micah loves lots of people, and seems pretty happy. :)

Mama bird

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:40:38 GMT

Here are the photos of mama bird and her eggs!

You can't see my eggs! I'm hiding them like a good mama bird!

Oh! Here they are! Three of them! Poor little plucked chicken she is. Awww. She's completely stopped growing or caring for new feathers at this point. She let all the down fall or or she plucked it out during the egg laying. She doesn't bathe right now (ripe birdy alert!), and she preens very infrequently. She's all about the eggs right now.

She makes funny little chirpy noises now instead of any other noise she usually makes. Matthew likens it to a loose fan belt. He bent over her cage one night and asked her, "Do you need a new fan belt, honey?" Haha.

She won't come out for me right now, not even for a Nutriberry, and she's learned ALL my tricks. I need to get her to poo before I leave but she's adamantly not coming out. I'll try one more time, then I gotta go. Maybe we'll have Taco Del Mar for dinner again tonight. I'm not QUITE sick of it yet(actually I'd been craving it for a while recently), but it is also the only thing she'll come RIGHT out of her cage for. Soon as I get the burrito wrapping peeled off the top she is THERE. Flinging my chicken on the floor. She takes ahold of a hunk of chicken and flings it. Thank you, Micah, I was going to eat that but I guess not. :P

Anyway, she is getting up to eat and to drink, so that makes me happy. And I saw Matthew got her to poop this morning, so I guess it's ok...ish. I just wish she'd get over her "no pooping in the cage" policy.

Egg #3! Wooo!

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 05:21:56 GMT

She laid egg number three!

Crazy. NOW PLEASE STOP, OK? Three is SO enough.

Now what am I going to do when she expects them to have baby birds in them? And they don't?

I guess I'm going to have to sew her some baby birds. : /

sigh.

Little birdy, please go back to normal soon.

This is very stressful on everyone.

WOW!!!

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:34:39 GMT

Egg number two: A success!!!

Wow, is everyone in this house tired. Matthew's been super paranoid and scared about everything. Always wanting to take her in to the vet, and me arguing, pointing out how well she's doing. She's been doing SUPER well for being SUCH a poor hormonal, tired birdy. Eggs and caring for eggs and wow wow wow.

So, she's got two eggs!

Wow.

We all sure hope that this is the LAST EGG.

Maureen came over earlier today and told us we live in a very strange world. :) heh, I guess we do.

hm

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:37:55 GMT

I may have been wrong about when Micah laid her egg! I'm sitting beside her cage right now, and she's still making the intermittent squeaky noises.

I don't know why! Is she making them to warn us to leave her alone? She seems to only make them when she is actually sitting on her egg. They aren't really very happy noises, exactly.

They're weird. Perhaps I should take a small video of this oddity.

Anyway, this morning I decided to test the limits of my own maternal power by filling a tiny glass dish with food and placing it near Micah so she would eat, and hoooweee! That's some mighty fine protection power. She gave me one warning bite, and even lunged for me when I put a Nutriberry on the opposite side of the cage. Hand, exit, stage left! Quickly, now!

I've never known her to bite anyone hard, least of all me, even when she was distressed (I've untangled her from a few things, and usually panicked birds will bite during these times), but she's been an entirely different bird lately, and I wasn't going to risk it.

Poor little thing, oh man, I wish I knew what to do now. Are those squeaky noises good or bad or neither? How will I make sure she eats, drinks and poops? She doesn't poop in her cage! Should I give her a lot of light or a little light?

Geezy hocreezy. I didn't realize how little I knew. I've always dealt with boy birds. This is so much stuff!

I have to admit though, she's really adorable with that egg. I can't imagine anything more sweet. D'awwww.

SHE DID IT!!

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 06:20:29 GMT

She laid an egg!!!!

We think she did it sneakily, we're not sure exactly when she did it, but she's sitting on it all curled up around it with her wing over it and her head over it, and it's a HUGE EGG for that little bird! REALLY BIG EGG!!! No wonder she was SO HUGE in the belly!

But she did it! It's an egg and she's VERY noisy about it now, and it's likely there's another egg coming soon.

Well, honestly, the both of us are not sure EXACTLY when the egg came out, but what happened was we were sitting at the table and we heard her start making sporadic squeaky/angry noises, kind of a cross between when you touch her tail and she doesn't like it, and her normal clucking noises. We noticed it was happening kind of randomly at first, but then it started happening regularly, like every 15 seconds.

She was lying down on her so called "nest" (read: mess of crap she's been shredding), head down, all fluffy, and every time she would make the noise, she'd shake all over. We were kind of worried, but then I thought, huh that's funny, it's in regular intervals, then I said, hmmm....like a woman in labor. OHHHHHHhhhh, said we.

So, after a while of this (I didn't think to check the time of course, all eyes on the bird), Matthew started to fret too much, and I just stayed by her and talked nicely to her and then she kind of started acting differently... she had changed position (no longer head in the corner, now she was more facing us), her wings were extended somewhat, and her head was still down but kind of curled towards her wing and she kept kind of acting like she was kind of preening under her wing, or wanting to sleep and putting her head under her wing.

She was still making the squeaky noises (in fact, she still is, at semi regular intervals), and Matthew got on the phone to the emergency vet because he was so concerned. I was looking at her very closely and I saw her move her wing and there was something ROUND under there!!!! I got Matthew to put his flashlight on her and waited for the next time she let us peek under her wing and LO, it's really an egg! And a HUGE one! WOW! Poor girl! I would guess, without really examining it too closely, that it'd be the equivalent of a nine pound baby! Geez.

She's still sounding very uncomfortable, but we're going to assume that she's still having contractions after the laying, and let her rest for a while, then we'll check and make sure she's not in any kind of danger or anything, see if we can get her to poo, give her a treat and whatnot.

Update: We gave her a treat and checked out the egg. It's not as big as what I thought, but it's about the size of a mini cadbury egg or a pretty decently large grape.

She's still making uncomfortable clucky noises, but we didn't see any discoloration on her white nesting materials.

This has been pretty stressful for everyone - I haven't been updating this journal much, but if I had been I would have noted two vet visits (one to the emergency vet down the street) and a lot of nail biting.

But it's absolutely amazing to see she has an egg.

Of course, now she's working on the second one. Out of n... she lays in clutches of 2-5 eggs. Who knows how many she'll actually lay. And if I take away the eggs too soon, she'll just replace the one I took away with another. Or "double clutch", plopping a whole new clutch out. OMFG.

Whew. So, yeah. Wow. Ok. More updates as they happen. ;)

Long time no post

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 03:35:25 GMT

Micah has been good and cranky lately since it is molting and breeding seasons. Poor thing spent a while being horribly hormonal and unhappy, then went right into molting and being tired and cranky, then the hormonal AND molting. THEN, Matthew had the audacity to go to San Francisco for a week, and she just about lost it. UNHAPPY BIRDY.

She's happy again since Matthew is home, though. She can hardly be parted from him and is doing things like jumping down his shirt, taking naps with him, jumping on him if he gets close and of course, giving him tons of lovin'. She just now was impatiently dancing back and forth because she was 2 feet from him but not actually ON him. As soon as she got to be on him again she crawled around and stared at him and very clearly said, "HELLO!" Oh yes, and then all the fervent preening is all up ons here. That goes without saying. It's all very sweet but it's a tiny bit heartbreaking for me since she's made it very clear she loves him very much and me not so much at all. I can't help but feel a bit jealous and sad.

The whole week, she acted like *I* actually HID Matthew on purpose. She was very angry with me. I took away the human she has a big crush on, just when she needed him most. I also kept taking away all those wood shavings she was making and trying to nest with. Very upsetting.

I've been making a lot of Micah posts in my normal journal instead of here, and I probably ought to cut it out. :)

We had a garage sale recently, and Micah was really in her element for that. A ton of people, all there to worship her!

Anyway, tomorrow we're going to a birdy party! The Seattle Parrot Yahoo group is having a get together and we will be meeting a lot of people and birds. :D

Here are some recent photos of The Micah Bird:

Click on the photos for the entire photo set. :)

maternal

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:02:16 GMT

Apparently I've taken on the maternal role.

Which puts me in an interesting position. I'm definitely not her favorite because I'm not as much of a sucker. I don't care how much she's dancing around and howling, I'm working, not going outside. Outside time is later. And I only put up with the "Come here and get me oHH nevermind I run away!" game for so long before she's either coming out or staying in (see: working!). Matthew is the one she always wants to go to, both because I'm sure she likes him better in general but also because he has "SUCKER" written across his forehead in red ink. Yes, he will take her to the window, yes, he will take her outside, yes, he will stand on his head! So if it's a choice between him or me, the choice is always him.

On the other hand, I get to do all kinds of silly things to her she won't let him do. I get to clean the fuzz off her face when she pulls her stringy toy to bits. I get to chow down on the back of her neck (and get a kiss afterwards). I get to pet her whole back and right down her tail feathers. Basically I'm the one who licks my hankie and rubs the dirt off her face. Not literally. Though if she chews on my necklace I pretend I'm either going to gobble her up or lick her and she ducks away. She doesn't like my tongue, I think she thinks it's a scary thing. Also, I don't think human spit is good for birds, so yeah.

Anyway, I find it a bit amusing. Maureen, the current Queen of Micah's heart (no, seriously, I think that the highlight of Micah's day today was when Maureen came over to swap paper products - oh that sounds dirty) thinks it's very funny how she is very timid with Micah because Micah seems so fragile, then Micah comes back to me and I snorfle the back of her neck quite vigorously. (I find it incredibly hilarious that I get a kiss after this. I swear it has to be because she is trying to get me to quit it - she uses kisses as currency lately - "If I give you a kiss, will you take me outside/give me your food/hand me to Matthew/put me by the window" but Micah NEVER holds back on communicating when she doesn't like something, and she's never given any indication she doesn't find this thing amusing, so I keep snorfling her because it gives me the giggles AND I get a birdy kiss!)

Anyway, I just find that as time goes by and our roles get a little more cemented, though I still find myself singing the blues when it's painfully obvious she will not have anything to do with me if Matthew is available, I still get some special privileges. I guess it makes up for being the strict one. :)

Micah and dogs

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:44:46 GMT

Today at my enormous Gates family picnic, Micah was loved by one and all. She especially loved on my Grandma, who was tickled to death with her. She really really loved her. Micah started to fall asleep on Grandma, and Grandma said, "Oh I guess she'll just have to come home with me, then!"

Anyway, about Micah and dogs.

Recently, we noticed she didn't seem to care about dogs much anymore. She used to yell at them from her perch in the window in Matthew's room, but she stopped doing that. Then, Matthew reported she didn't seem to care about iheartiheart's little dogs, Paco (a pug) and Chloe (a boston terrier) when he went over there.

So, yesterday I decided to take Micah with me when I went to have tea with iheartiheart, and Micah was completely chill. Well, other than falling all over herself because she LOVES MAUREEN SO MUCH OMG. Seriously. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVVVVVVVVVE. LOVE. Like whoa.

Like, when I'm walking past their house, the Big Lean, "Please let us go over there?" love. LOVE.

Anyway, apart from the noisy declarations of LOVE LOVE LOVE, Micah was really chill. In fact, Paco was going OUT OF HIS BRAINS CRAZY trying to get close enough to Micah to sniff her, and she was all, "yeah whatever."

Maybe it's because Micah loves Maureen so much. Maybe she just doesn't get as upset about dogs - she doesn't really yell at them from the window anymore, even when I tease and say, "LOOK IT'S A DOG IT'S A DOG!" In the pet store she never seems upset about the dogs.

It's weird because I would list that as her number one hate before. DARN THOSE DOGS HATE THE DOGS. But not anymore.

Also, white towels are not the devil anymore either, since that's all we use around the house. She will sit on the towel rail with the towels and nibble on them, and doesn't freak out when she hangs out in the bathroom with me while I'm towel drying. We also have white terry cloth bathrobes she does not hate.

Tissues, wet wipes and toilet paper, though, are still mortal enemies.

But the mail is a special treat now. She is offended if we do not offer her a piece of junk mail to chew and it's become her daily treat when I come home from work. I usually get the mail and there's ALWAYS some credit card offer so she chews on it for me, tearing it to little shreds, yay!

So, anyway, Micah and I will have to go to Grandma's house and see what Micah thinks of the Brittany (or whatever their dog is) my grandparents have. He's kind of an old dog now, so he's nowhere near as excitable as he used to be, and a tiny fraction of the excitable Paco was.

Seriously, I thought Paco was going to lose his shit, he wanted to sniff Micah SO BAD. PLEASE LET ME SMELL THAT FUNNY LOOKING CREATURE PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE. If Paco managed to junp up within 2 feet of Micah, though, she would just move to the other shoulder of whoever she was sitting on and make faces at Paco. Seriously, she'd cock her head at him and stuff. We seriously thought she was teasing him. Also, pugs are funny, if you cock your head, so will they.

So, yep. I'm tired after a few hours in the sun with a bunch of relatives. OY.

Woo hoo!

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:27:26 GMT

Today Julie's family had a big picnic, and I got to meet her grandma and grandpa and a million aunts, uncles and cousins. Julie's Mom and Dad and brother were there, too. I LOVED Julie's Grandma and she seemed to love me, too.

It was at Magnuson park and it was very sunny and warm and I'd been itching to go outside anyway.

Julie's Grandma turned to Julie as we were leaving and said, "Thank you for bringing Micah with you!" She says we should come over and visit.

Ok time for more napping.

Bathtime!

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:11:08 GMT

Micah takes a bath.

whew!

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:12:44 GMT

Wow, these last three days have been crazy! I'm so exhausted! I'll have to write about them later.

Exhausting but FUN!!

photo post!

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:51:28 GMT

I took a few photos of Micah outside on our new trellis that Matthew built for the kiwi vines.

(she LOVES sitting on the trellis when the sun is out, like it was yesterday. She also loves chewing off bits of the trellis.)

I also took a photo of Micah with her polly dolly for halation. This is basically just a mass of strips of fabric interspersed with bits of wood on thick strings. Recently, she's begun to chew the wood up, which thrills me because it's the first time since she's come here that she's shown interest in REALLY chewing on things (other than proffered toilet paper tubes and the like), especially things made of wood, like her perches, which she's also begun chewing on. I'm happy because this is what happy, healthy, adjusted and normal birds like her are SUPPOSED to want to do. I was mildly worried before because she just wasn't showing interest, but I feel better now.

I snapped a pic of Micah's cage just for the heck of it. I should take a photo of the lay of the land in the livingroom, but I'd have to do that with a real camera, when the light isn't so harsh.

Inside the cage you can see the polly dolly in the upper left, then on the far right is the bell she rings for service, and in the middle is her new favorite toy, a big preening toy made up of a bunch of strings. She loves this thing. Threaded in the cage bars are are straw-like chewy things called "Shredders" that she only sometimes chews, oh well. She seemed to like it in the store, but she was pretty excited to be in the store at the time so anything was fair chew game, I guess. She likes it when *I* play with a bit of the stuff, she gets very excited when I play with her toys.

This week we've been working on having some "cage days", as in, days where Matthew does not spoil her rotten by taking her upstairs with him into the office while he works. Every other day is "cage day" where she hangs out in her cage and plays with her toys and we interact with her while she's in there while we do other things, till we can go for a walk or whatnot. Lately I've been trying to make certain I get some kind of walking in, and if I haven't done it during the course of my workday or whatnot, Micah and I go around the block a couple of times. She's more well behaved when she isn't expecting to be with Matthew 100% of the time. She still gets pretty excitable when she knows he's around but she's not actually ON HIS PERSON or right next to him in the office looking out the window, but I think she's doing a lot better.

I just got tired of having her in her cage while I was working, being all agitated because she wasn't with Matthew. She wasn't really screaming too much, but she would pace in her cage, flap her wings a lot, make agitated noises and say, "Ok" a lot. I can't help but feel bad when she obviously wants something soooo bad. She's a lot better about it now so I don't have to be so tortured or feel like the "bad guy" all the time.

Newest thing though, for us, is I put on a sweater and let her sit on me between my shirt and my sweater. She Adores that with a capital A. Last night we ate dinner this way. Rather, I ate dinner and she hung out in my sweater. After I was done, she came out of my sweater, and gave me a million kisses. This was suspicious (she'll give me a few kisses at a time, but not like THIS), so I wiped my lips off. Less kisses. She was totally trying to lick the remains of dinner off my lips. What a stinker.

She is out with Matthew now while he runs an errand and I better get my butt into the shower for my appointment. Speaking of shower, Matthew caught her taking a bath on tape, so I'll have to upload that.