Now see, a lot of people would read that statement, and think, yep, that’s Donna alright.  But actually, I’m not referring to myself, this is all about our fids.  This is just a little up-to-date life in the day of us, as bird owners.

Cameo

Well heck yeah, she has attitude.  Just ask Gord.  He still gets the occasional chomp, and despite daily attempts to ‘make friends’ with our CAG, he’s not allowed to pet her from behind or on the top of her head.  She’ll cuddle with me and let me pet her anywhere I like, but Gord is only easily able to touch her toes and beak, with the occasional quick scritch under the wings or down her breast-bone.  Cameo does everything in  her power to avoid having him touch her back, to the point of biting and/or flying away.  You got it, Gord’s not feeling the love with her most days.

On the other hand, Cameo will fall all over herself to give Gord a kiss or bonk him with her beak, including making the kissy noises, or saying BONK.  With me, I have to earn a kiss, and when she decides to give me one, it is usually accompanied by a farting noise.  Yeah, I feel the love, too.

Casey

I’m pretty sure attitude is his rain forest name.  Our big guy is still a clown, and still figures he’s the only thing in our house allowed to make big noise.  If we laugh loud, he’ll scream to be louder.  When we talk loud, he tells us to shut-up.  If any of the other birds are louder than him, he tells them to stop it.  If anything, including the TV is making noise (or more than he feels like making at a particular moment), he’s pretty likely to tell the world in general  to F**K OFF (yes, he still says that, thank you to his previous owners and the pet store in Fort McMurray!).

Then, there’s the whole affection thing.  As of late, Casey has decided that while I am still his mate, I have to pretty much beg for kisses.  He shakes his head no, he pulls back (psych!), he wanders away, he gives me the ol’ cheek busk, but the real kisses, I gotta try and try and try before he’ll give me one.  If Gord should come close while I’m trying to get a birdie kiss, Gord gets smooches like no tomorrow, to the point the bird will reach around me to kiss Gord, but I get nothing.  He still wants to hack crap up and feed me, but not give me any of the loving I want.

Sunshine

Ok, so Dude is still a sweetheart of a little guy, and his missus is still a supreme bitch.  I dunno how else to describe it.  I feed them pretty much every day (Gord does take the occasional turn), I give them water, I clean their cage, I give her paper to shred so she doesn’t feel the need to pluck feathers to nest with, I give her fresh fruits and veggies and sometimes even treats.  I’m a good person, really.  Just don’t ask Sunshine for her opinion, cause I’m pretty sure she’d dis me to no end.  Every time I get close to that cage, she tries to take me out.  I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding the beak, but in the process I’ve worn both the water from the clean and dirty water dishes, as well as dumping the entire fresh food dish over myself and the floor.  And now she’s nesting again (2 eggs as of yesterday), so believe it or not, she’s actually worse.  If she’s out of the cage, she’s not so deadly, she’ll ride around on my shoulder or hanging somewhere on my shirt, but I’m still not allowed to touch her then, either.  Dude, I dunno man, you got a NASTY female in your life, you poor little guy.

Pearl and Al

Ok, so most of the time, I think both Pearl and Al want to be friendly and nice, but sometimes, they forget and crank at me.  Pearl will be going along letting me give him a head scritch, leaning into it and giving out these sweet little grunty-chirps, then suddenly BAM, he’s trying to chomp my fingers off and squawking at me like I’ve just pulled out all his tail-feathers.  I don’t think Gord is allowed to even scritch him, most of the time.  It’s like he has multiple personalities, and one of them is really mean.  Poor little Al, I’m pretty sure she wants to be friends, she comes over and even sometimes puts her head over for one of those scritches like she keeps seeing me give Pearl, but as soon as my hand starts toward her, she backs up and gives me the hissy-sneezy sort of movement/sound.  She’ll usually let Gord touch her, as long as no one else is close (humans that is), but she’s really nervous/skittish, even with him.

Interactions

Pearl and Al have a love-hate relationship going with Cameo, their next-door-birdie.  Of course, as far as we can tell, Cameo instigates the territorial fights – the little brat goes to the back corner of her cage closest to their cage, and sticks her toes through as close to their cage as she can get them.  Then the 2 of them come a-running and squawking in full alarm cause she’s invading them.  She’ll calmly pull back, hang upside down, and watch the cockatiels freak out.  Cameo waits until they calm down, and sort of ‘go away’ from that area of their cage, then she sticks her toes through again and starts up the entire ruckus all over again.

Dude and Sunshine like to have out-of-cage time, but they can only be out for a few minutes before they’re causing wars, too.  I swear they go and land on the other birds cages just to piss them off, and when the bird they’ve gone to irritate gets close to them on the cage, off they fly to go land either elsewhere on the same cage, or on someone elses’ cage to annoy them.  Like, they never land on the top of Cameo’s cage (it’s solid, so she wouldn’t see them up there), they always go for the side of hers, but with Casey, they land on top (his is open/wire on top) where we can’t reach them easily to get them off.

Holding any two different species of birds doesn’t work, either – jealousy reigns supreme.  And heaven forbid either Gord or I hold one bird, and then not give equal time to the others – we get the one-eyed baleful stare until we pony up at least a pet and attempt of a kiss, if not an all-out take the bird out of the cage and play.

Look!  It's back!  Yep, we resurrected the Pets Own Us website, and hope to get back to updating it, adding pics and videos and newsposts and all that other great stuff.  I sort of had to let the website slide for a while as other things (like work and life in general) got in the way, but Gord decided we should once again pay homage to our critters, so we brought back 'their' website, so here we go, and let's hope between us and the fids/cat/fish/iquana, we can find enough to keep it interesting.

Gord's been working on some video, maybe he'll post it sometime soon.  Of course, today when he pointed the camera at the birds, they all turned mum, but I'm sure they'll get used to it again soon :) .

Ok, so, I haven't added to this site in months, and I thought it was probably time to catch up.  We have had a few significant changes over the months.

First, Finnegan.  We found our little friend Finnegan a new home, and he moved off with Liza Nelson and her family to enjoy the love and attention of some good people.  I have to admit, it was love at first sight for both Finnegan and Liza, and although it took Liza some doing, she managed to rearrange her life to accommodate her new bestest buddy.  Finnegan took to the change with gusto, and we hope he and the Nelson household are all doing well.

Second, well, we moved from Fort McMurray to Calgary, Alberta.  It was quite a disruption of our lives, and no less of a disruption to the lives of all our pets.  It took us about 9 hours of driving time to get here with all our critters in our two trucks, but the birds, cats, and the iguana are all troopers and made the trip with little issue.  Actually, the iguana and the cats decided to cozy up together in the back of my truck, which was weird, especially the couple of hours where Enid was sleeping on top of Skit, and that silly cat just couldn't seem to care less!  Anyhow, we've been down here about two months now, and everyone has pretty much relaxed into the new house well, Enid is still hunting for the perfect heated/lit place to sleep (her stand is apparently NOT that place), but I'm sure she will settle down eventually.

Third, updates on Cameo's speech.  Yes, our little African Grey is still expanding her vocal abilities, and has recently taken to saying "Wow" a lot, and in the last two weeks, she has also learned to say "HEY, want some PIZZA?"  Yes, Gord and I taught her to say it, it's a huge improvement over the swearing she was doing.  We discovered the other day that she is getting to be quite a ham, we pointed our new video camera at her, and she talked to it for a solid two hours!  It's funny, she won't talk when Gord is in the room, but she talks to him like no tomorrow when he's just out of sight.  Oh, another new feature she's added to her repertoire, and this is something she does do with Gord, is to hit her beak against something (such as Gord's fingers), and then say "BONK".  Silly bird, but fun.

Fourth, we have ordered two new cages from CagesByDesign.com for Casey and Cameo, and look forward to receiving their new homes sometime in the next month or so.  Both cages (identical) will be 4' wide x 4' deep x 8' high, with built in food dishes, a couple of big perches, and will have wire sides and plexiglass front and back.  We will have them set up side by side, so that both birds have a friend, as Casey has been kind of lonely in the living room in the new house without the other birds (the others are all in the kitchen), and we just aren't always in his sight like we're apparently supposed to be.

Fifth, Calgary.  I've always liked Calgary to visit, and this was Gord's home for a long time, and so we have no qualms about living here, especially as we get to visit places like the Calgary Zoo as often as we want (we bought annual passes).  As in the past, I find I still really like the hippos, and the giraffes, to me, all animals are amazing, but really, who would have thought up a critter that is a grazer with a mouth as big as a hippopotomus?  Or an animal with such long legs and neck as the giraffe, but it still can't eat food on the ground easily?  Just amazes me.  Anyhow, the Calgary Zoo trips have been a blast for both Gord and I, it's all changed since either of us last got to visit, so we've had a great time exploring and getting to know it again, and with the passes, we can take all the time we want!  As for the rest of Calgary, we've had a really good time getting to know the city again, and have had a lot of fun here.  We've driven around and visited a few of Gord's old haunts (including Peters, a great hamburger place), and did the tourist thing at the Stampede, and even did a float down the Bow River one hot sunny Sunday.  Yup, we are having fun in our new home, and look forward to lots more!

Final (for now), we purchased a new Sony video camera, and have started taking footage of our animal friends.  Look for new video clips in the Gallery in the next months, we'll probably have LOTS to put up!

Yes, once again, our prolific little Peach-faced Lovebirds are in the nesting stage, and we expect to have a clutch start to hatch here within the next few days.

Dude and Sunshine are such good parents, pretty much all we have to do is provide lots of food and fresh water daily, a clean cage for them, and they do all the rest.  They've clutched several times in the years we've owned them, and the last clutch had 4 lutino (yellow like Sunshine) and one green (like Dude).  They are such beautiful little birds!

We expect that when the current clutch of babies are somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks old, they will be ready to find new homes.  Anyone interested in getting a cute little companion, please get in touch with us, and we'll arrange a baby-viewing!

Finnegan is a male, Blue-fronted Amazon, supposedly about 3-4 years old, which we received from the local pet store, North Star Pets in late May/2004.  We temporarily adopted him at first at the pet store manager's request - he was biting people and having seizures, and they were extremely worried the bird was getting either very ill, or possibly close to death.  Eventually, the pet store and I came to an agreement, and we decided to keep the little guy because we knew he could never go back to the pet store, and we named him Finnegan (as a side-kick to our Blue-and-gold Macaw, Casey!), and we have him still.

The pet store had purchased Finnegan from a local pet owner, the owner was reportedly having issues with the bird making noise in his place (gee, do birds make noise?), he had to choose between the Amazon and an African Grey he also owned - he decided to keep the Grey and sell the Amazon.  Well, the pet store are good people, but don't really have a suitable place for big birds, and the staff do their best but they aren't very experienced with the larger birds, so, the poor bird wasn't doing too well.  They had him living in the small bird room for about two and a half weeks before we wandered in one day.  He was kind of front and centre for all the customers to poke and prod at, his cage wasn't big enough for him to really get away from fingers in, and so he started to chomp at the fingers that kept 'attacking' him.  Also, small birds tend to be noisy, and active, and one or the other of the many in the small bird room is pretty much always on the go.  Larger birds, including parrots such as Finnegan, require 10-12 hours of dark, uninterrupted sleep each night, much like a 3-5 year-old human child.  As the poor bird wasn't getting the sleep he needed, his body started to express the issue, and this is what caused the seizures - when you get exhausted, your body shuts down.

We took Finnegan away with us, to try to get him settled down - stop the biting and the seizures, and see if he could be a happy bird.  The first day was not good for any of us, as we had to give him a wing trim to avoid having him fly out an open door or something, but after that, Finnegan settled down in his cage, and basically slept for 5 days, waking only to eat, drink, poop and maybe look around for a few minutes before nodding off again.  We had him close to our other 2 parrots, so he could see us interacting with them, and in a location where he could see people coming and going, but where the people couldn't get at him to bother him, and after the big sleep, he gradually started to fit into our lives.

We determined that Finnegan had possibly been abused in a former home, as well as having lived in a heavy cigarette-smokers' household.  He was extremely frightened of peoples' hands, but would happily interact with me if I kept my hands behind my back, leading us to believe he had actually been struck by someone.  Finnegan was also decidedly freaked out by large men - Gord is 6'4" and the poor bird would beat his wings so hard to get away from Gord inside the cage that he broke feathers right off.  It was sad, knowing that someone big had hurt this poor little bird.  Lots of our friends and customers would come in and hear the story, and ask how anyone could hit a bird - my response is still - how could anyone hit a child? or a spouse? or a dog? What's the difference, they're all defenseless, and its ALL wrong.

Needless to say, we've now had Finnegan for over six months.  There hasn't been a single seizure since we got him, the regular rest seems to have resolved that issue.  The nicotine poisoning - well, we're still working on that, but after a month or so of having a spray shower every second day or so and all the fresh food, he finally started to groom his feathers.  He still carries a musty odour sometimes, but we think he's better than he was.  We know his life-span has been shortened by the heavy exposure to cigarettes, much the same as a human's life would be, and taking into account that Finnegan is a lot smaller than a human.

As for being hand-tamed again, and friendly, well, we're getting there.  Finnegan especially likes women or smaller men, but he is now displaying to Gord as well, and will go to him without much of a fuss.  With me, he calls and displays, and kisses, and struts, and wants very much to be the centre of my world, which is a trick with all our other birds and our 2 cats also vying for my attention.  We do know that Finnegan is a good bird, and getting friendlier all the time.  He can speak, although he mainly just says "oh-oh" in a sing-song voice that sounds suspiciously like ICQ.  We have to keep his wing-feathers trimmed, as he really likes to fly all over, and we don't want an accident, it would be heartwrenching if he flew out the door by mistake!

So, the problem bird, who was so ill, is now a healthy little guy.  It takes a lot of love to reverse the affects of abuse, but it can be done.  Yes, we bled a little (ok, Gord mostly did the bleeding), but Finnegan never bit out of anger, only in fear.  He can be handled, and actually wants to be stroked and petted now, his trust builds daily and he seems to be much more content - all in all, a happy Blue-fronted Amazon who has made a mark in the lives of all of us who know him!

Check for more pictures of Finnegan in our Gallery.