Complete Randomness

Nikki incognito

Dad making crochet humor.  I thought my little elephant needed a mom so I am in the process making her one.

Frog in glass by Spark

Mac and cheese doesn't have food coloring anymore!!!  It is has been about 10 years since has been welcome in our house, but it's in now! Seems like a novelty to us.

When Fluffles isn't sleeping he's trying to figure out how to get some Temptations cat treats.

Out to lunch

Dancer, the queen of selfies.

Yeah, that's a goat/llama water bucket.  They think the buckets are either a bathroom or a footbath.

The thank you gift we made for Spark's speech co-op leaders.

Double decker sleeping spot.

Car washing.

The want ads at the feed mill.

Bert after a bath.

This Is Not Good

 

The cats have been after Bert like he is made of catnip.  The other night we were watching a movie, The Awakening Land, really good if you have five and half hours to spare, and Bert's bell was just a ringing and a ringing.   After a few minutes of this I thought, he never rings his bell this much.  We paused the movie, went into Spark's room where Bert lives and saw those two thugs we call cats on his cage rocking it back and forth.  Well, Skips was on top but, Mr. Fluffles was down below cheering him on.  Since that night, we have tried to keep Spark's door closed for Bert's personal safety. 

 

Today Skips got in there so Dancer went in to get him and she was sure she shooed him out. She shut the door and, with no bell ringing, we weren't aware that anything was amiss.  When Spark went in to take out his dirty clothes this is what he saw.  Oh Bert, I think we are going to have to start praying for you.

Bert Gets A Little Blog Time

Bert likes to sit on Spark's shoulder, but while that sounds cool, he has really sharp claws like pins sticking you.

Giving a loud squawk - no, he was yawning, sorry we are boring you Bert.

Give me some string cheese and nobody gets hurt.

What he really does when the camera comes out is to start hamming it up.  I swear he knows what a camera is because he starts posing, dancing and doing all his get attention tricks the minute he hears the camera turn on.

Dragon Aren't Scary

It's the parrot in the background we should be worried about.

Bert is Dancer's parrot but her room isn't big enough for his palace so he lives in Spark's room.  Spark spends a lot of time in his room playing with his Legos and taking hundreds of pictures of them. Bert always goes to the bottom of his house to get as close as he can to the action and to snoopervise what is going on.  If he gets to come out he will fly over to the Lego bins and look through them.  Alas, he doesn't get to come out very often because it is so hard to get him to go back in.  He doesn't go back until he is darn good and ready, which is always way longer than when we want him to, and we can't just grab him and put him back because he will bite.

Bert's Bath Day

About once a month Bert takes a bath.  We have tried to figure out when he does it and put a pie pan of water in his house but he never uses it.  He bathes in his water dish.  He stands on the edge and dips his chest and head into the water.  He gets completely wet and then shakes like a dog.

He was really fluffed up and going at it until I came in with the camera.  As soon as he sees the camera he gets excited.

Bert got right up in the front of his cage on the closest perch to check out what I was doing.  We don't know if he likes his picture taken or if he is just interested in the flash.

He was so wet he was dripping.  In the winter, when it is colder in the house, if we hear him bathing we quick run a space heater in his room so he doesn't get chilled.

Making Friends With Bert

Senegal parrots tend to attach to one person, perhaps all parrots do this but I don't know about other breeds.  When we got Bert he decided that he liked me.  I think it had something to do with the chunk he took out of my finger the first time I tried to pet him and then I was brave enough to try and pet him again.  I now have a scar to ever remember Bert from but he must of thought I wasn't a threat anymore and so far has not bitten me again.  When you draw blood from one person, other people are not so eager to try and pet you.  Spark plays in his room a lot and Bert has gotten somewhat attached to him.  If Spark is in his room and opens Bert's door so he can climb on top of his cage, he sometimes will fly down and land on Spark's shoulder or head and once in while will even let Spark pet him when he is in his cage.  Spark still isn't too eager to stick his finger in Bert's cage, I think my bleeding finger is still in his mind.  Bert loves Legos, which Spark usually has out when he is in his room, so I think that may have been part of the attraction to Spark.  This is all well and good but, Bert is Dancer's bird.

Dancer has been spending time in Spark's room sitting on his bed, playing music (Bert loves music and will dance), and quietly reading or drawing.  She opens Bert's door so he can come out and sit on his cage.  Finally, finally, Bert decided that Dancer must be okay because he flew over and landed on her chest.  Then he climbed up on her shoulder and started preening her hair (something he use to do to his old owner).  Of course when he did this the battery in one camera was dead and the memory card in the other was locked.  By the time we got those to dilemmas fixed Bert had jumped down.  He did come back later and sit on her leg.

He also jumped on her other knee.  Dancer is doing a pet education project for 4-H on parrot toys and for the project you are suppose to have a picture of you and your pet.  Mission accomplished finally!  Dancer would like one of him sitting on her shoulder but if this is the best we can get without freaking Bert out this is the picture that will go on her poster.

I just read the post to the kids to see what they thought of it and Bert can tell we are talking about him.  He is in his room yelling out, "Pretty, pretty, pretty Bert."  A humble bird he is not.

Good Night, I Said Good Night

When Bert is ready to go to bed he starts saying "Good night."  That means he wants us to cover his cage and turn out his light.  If we don't go in his room right away he will keep saying "Good night."  If we take to long to get in there he will start saying louder and louder, "Good Night Bert!"

Bert and Spark share a room.  If we cover Bert and then Spark goes to bed but I stay in to talk to him a little while, Bert keeps saying from his covered cage, "good night, good night."  He sure knows how to drop a hint that he wants us to stop talking so he can go to bed.

Step up

When we got Bert, his old owners told us that he would "step up" on your finger.  We have been trying and trying to get him to do it and he never made a move towards stepping up.  Finally, finally, he stepped up on to my fingers.  I have a socked wrapped around them because he does bite and draws blood.  If he bites something, and it doesn't pull away, then he quits biting it.  I want him to bite the sock not my finger.  We think it must mean that he thinks it isn't something trying to attack him if it doesn't jerk back when he strikes.

As he was sitting on my hand he did a little flap and jumped up onto my shoulder.  He is so light weight that I could hardly tell he was sitting there except for the claw he was using to hang on.  We hope this means he totally trusts us now.

Turns out Bert has a few secrets up his wing

When we took pictures of Bert the other night for his photo shoot, some of the photos showed a covering over part of his eye on quite a few of the pictures.  We had never noticed this before.  A little research found that this is an extra eye lid that lubricates and cleans the eye.  Now Bert does blink his whole eye lid, not as often as a person does, but quite regularly.  I have since stood looking at his eye, watching him like a hawk (bet he doesn't like that word), and cannot, with my bare eye, see this extra eye lid so it must be lightening fast.  The camera takes pictures at a fraction of a second so this is the only way we knew he had this secret eye lid.  It showed up in several of the pictures so he must blink it often. 

Here is one where it is covering almost his whole eye.  Makes him look quite snarly doesn't it.  I think I am glad we can't see it.

His second secret is his leg band.  This little band tells a lot of information.  Bert's leg band is closed, meaning it was slipped on his foot when he was two to three weeks old and then as he grew it got stuck on his leg.  This tells us that he was a domestic bird from a bird breeder.  In it's prime the band was a dark pink.  From what we can find out, that only tells us that his breeder liked pink, it has no other significance. The band has four initials on it that tells us his breeder was DH, we don't know who this is, but MN tells us he was born and breed right here in good old Minnesota.  His band also has the numbers 96 and 8 on it.  The 96 is his birth year so he is at least 14 years old as of the 31st of this month.  The 8 tells us that he was the 8th bird hatched from a set of parrots or the 8th bird hatched at the breeders depending on how they counted their birds.   He did say "Happy Birthday" a couple of days ago, could he have been trying to tell us something?  He wanted a special birthday peanut perhaps?   We will never know, that he is still keeping a secret.

Bert's Photo Shoot

It may be my imagination, but I think he poses.  Snap a picture and he moves and waits for the next picture, then turns and waits, and turns and waits.  He is not camera shy!

Second Hand Parrots

Turns out ours can perfectly screech MEEP-MEEP-MEEP like an electric alarm clock.   Nice.

Pretty Bert

Dancer has been wanting a parrot.   Well, that is nice honey but we are not getting a parrot.  Then, lo and behold, we were asked if we wanted a parrot.   The people we got him from had him for six years and think he is not too much older than that, probably under ten years old.  Dancer knows that he will most likely live another 30 years and says she is willing to haul him around until she is about my age.  We will see, I think he will probably be here until she is married and living in her own permanent home.  

So here he is, he is living in Spark's room since that is where we have space for him right now.  Maybe after Christmas we will move him out to the living room.  He will be more used to us by then too.  

Bert is quite the bird already.  He whistles, says pretty Bert, good night, makes kiss noises, screeches, squawks, coughs if someone in the room coughs, dances, bangs his little ankle tag on his perch when he wants attention and likes to have his head scratched. 

Bert is a Senegal parrot the size of 20 oz. pop bottle.

It is thought that he is boy, but that is purely speculation.  He could be a Roberta instead of Bert.

His cage is about four feet tall and at least two feet square, his accommodations are the Hilton of the bird world. 



It seems he has every bird toy ever made that we are suppose to switch out every couple of months so he doesn't get bored.