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Shari leaves town a couple times a year. These are usually the time when I get the PEACH aka Richard
Parker. This time, I am fortunate to also get THE birds. Not just her bird, but also Jeff's three. So
my little one bedroom abode is currently housing myself, Richard Parker, Lolly, Ollie, and two as yet
unnamed parakeets. So far they's been here for just over a week. I've been bitten and pooped on. My level
of cleanliness has been adjusted to account for seeds and poo. I wake up earlier. I have perishable goods
in my refriegerator. It has been an adjustment, I'm sure for not just myself, but all in all a good one.
We are working out our daily routine and they've only drawn blood once and so far have only chewed through
one speaker wire.
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This is Lolly. She's the one that belongs to my mother. She is a Myer's Parrot. Prior to this visit, I
wouldn't have considered Lolly and I friends. I would see her from time to time at my mom's house and she'd
usually be coming at me with her beak open for attack. Things have changes now. We're buds. Her cage is
closest to me during the day. She prefers people as company. Much of her time is spent either on my desk or
trying to get on my desk. Because she is a bit of a terrorist bird, I've had to remove everything from my
desktop. She likes to sit on my laptop while I'm working. She tries to destroy that too. She throws and breaks
my pencils and poos on my screen while I'm trying to work. She bites me hard and hisses if I try to put her in her
cage when she doesn't want to go there. She also rides around on my shoulder, pulls my hair, and whistles for me
when she can't see me.
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This is Ollie. She is Jeff's bird. She is a Monk Parakeet. She and Lolly are pretty much the same size. She
doesn't bite as hard as Lolly and spends most of her time trying to get to the parakeets' cage to torment them. I've
had to ground her from visiting though as she has started to figure out the door and I don't want her to really get them.
They are mostly scared and defenseless. Ollie likes to be held and pet. She spends the rest of her day looking out
the window. She does it at night too, which leads me to wonder if she's got some depression. It can be a sad sight.
Since she's been staying with me, she can spend most of her day with her cage open and she seems to like that. At some
point I'm going to let Lolly and Ollie hang out together because they should learn to be friends.
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These are the parakeets. They are Jeff's also. They are wild and psychotic. So far they've never been out
of their cage. Sometimes I leave the door open, but they don't seem interested. They spend most of their day
preening each other and sleeping while standing on one foot. I bought them a sugar cane log that it took them
2 days not to be afraid of, so that is also a new project for them. I'm not sure why they've never been named.
Maybe because they are so wild, that there's really no reason to address either of them. They make a lot of noise
either squawking or throwing themselves around in their cage. They seem to be the least finnicky eaters of the bunch.
They love broccoli and as of now, I'm calling the Azul and Blanco. Azul gets held daily.
Blanco draws blood, but not for the Red Cross.
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Lolly's cage is closest to my desk. Much of her daily activity includes her trying to figure out how to
get over onto the desk. Once she does that, she systematically throws or attempts to destroy everything
on my desk. Eventually she makes her way to my laptop then gets on the desktop monitor shelf and squats
down so she can creep around under there and look for trouble. This is what a creeping bird looks like.
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It didn't take long to figure out that we're on different schedules. Richard Parker (aka THE PEACH) and I
prefer to sleep late. The birds prefer to get up with the sun. This has conditioned me to get up and open
the shaking cage doors in my sleep and go right back to bed without even remembering having done this. Then
later some squawking that I'm not conditioned to sleep through will take place, and we'll get up. This photo
was taken one morning when this happened. Lolly, whose cage is in the foreground, out of the shot, so about
as far from the window as she can be, is the bird in the window (top circle). Ollie whose cage is in the photo
is in the bottom circle making her way across the room via the floor.
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Lolly likes to ride around on my shoulder. I suffer painfully for allowing her this pleasure, but if I
don't then everytime I'm out of her line of sight, we have to play the whistling game. Probably doesn't
sound as serious as I'm making it. Anyway, her claws are too long and very sharp so she scratches my shoulder
thru my shirt and she bites my neck. My neck and hands have all these little bloody spots from bird attacks.
In this shot, she's going after my necklace instead of my neck.
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This is what I found one night when I came home a little earlier than usual...Lolly just finishing off
her pint.
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I haven't yet come to understand exactly what birds do in life, or why. For the first few days, Lolly
threw everything she could on the floor. Then for the next few days she would climb down her cage to
the floor and pick stuff back up, seed by seed, climb the 17 steps back up the ladder and then eat the
seed. She did this over and over, day after day. It's not like I stopped feeding her. This shot is her
on the floor, I think during this time. She and Richard Parker were having a bit of a standoff, but
they stopped to pose for the photo.
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There are times, however brief, when Lolly stops terrorizing and just rests on top of my screen. She likes
human closeness. This is her being sweet, resting on one foot, watching me work.
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And all this time, the good little wild, psychotic parakeets are over in their cage, minding their own
business. Blanco is busy at work in the sugar cane, while Azul stands watch.
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I know this is the bird page, but Richard Parker looks grand sitting safely on her little throne.
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Richard Parker catching some sun. Notice the mess the birds make.
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This is one of the times when Lolly wasn't being sweet and resting. She's on a mission to destroy
my laptop. She tries to bite me while I type. Some might ask why I don't remove her from the keyboard.
I might answer that I get hissed at and violently attacked if I do something against the bird's will.
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Here is Lolly shortly after she learned how to pry the keys off my keyboard. She has F3 in her beak
and is in the process of making a run for it. Luckily she likes treats better and I was able to trade
her for the F3 key.
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Ollie and Lolly are learning to be friends. I got them to stop sparring and pose for this one. Sorry
the focus isn't so good.
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