A Snippet of My Today

I’ve inherited a pigeon. It just showed up one day around Christmas and has been a frequent visitor ever since. I’m a bit surprised that it’s alone as I always suspected they hung out in big social flocks. But James and I both think it cannot fly. At least we’ve never seen it fly. We’ve approached it and everything and it just runs away….

Originally I took to calling it The Major because it struts. But that changed to The Dowager because it cocks its head comically like Maggie Smith’s character in ‘Downton Abbey.’ And today I’m thinking it looks a bit like Downton’s butler ‘Carson’ because its beak is large and I think I heard it ‘harrumph’. But Maj. Dowager Carson sounds excessive. So for now it’s still ‘It’….

Of course I’ve left food out for it (you’re surprised, aren’t you?) but my resident juvenile squirrels are experiencing their first Tumbledown winter. If something looks, smells, resembles, or even whispers the word ‘food’ they’ll eat it. Not only have they bullied the pigeon away from its meal, I’m afraid it’ll be dessert if it’s not careful…. 

There’ve been times when the Squirrel Gang has swooped down on my feeder and wreaked violent havoc, and then I’ve not seen the pigeon for over a day. I’m afraid to hunt around too carefully then (don’t want to look behind the garbage bin and see something traumatizing), and am always elated when it shows up at the doorstep, patiently awaiting its handout. Like today. I looked out the back door and there it was on the step, its feathers all fat and fluffy in the cold and its red eye trained on the door like it expected Room Service to arrive at any moment. (It did. Who could resist? Not me.)

The only ever time I’ve had a similar situation was years ago when the little neighbor boy brought me a mourning dove because his mom wouldn’t let him keep it. That dove couldn’t fly either. I promised him I’d take care of it and he could visit whenever he wanted, but he forgot about it after that. I fed the dove what I thought was a quality meal and made sure it had gravel, greens, and water. And rest. Weeks later it surprised me by flying up to a curtain rod (yes, I had it in my house; you have no idea how much I’ve been resisting bringing the pigeon indoors….). And a week or so later when another single mourning dove appeared outside, calling, I released it and they flew away together. Success. Recalling that, I routinely add grains, greens, and gravel to the pigeon’s mix and hope it gets a taste, at least, before the squirrels come leaping the fence.

So we’ll see....

James keeps reminding me that its existence would be warmer and safer if I had only let him get me that chicken coop for Christmas. I might just have to finally take him up on that. :)

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Piranha Birds

Lovey's on the left, complete with paper butt tiara.

Peachy-faced Piranha Birds is my new name for lovebirds 'Lovey' and 'Thurston.'

 

It's not original to me; my friend CollegeGuy (who watches our 'zoo' in our absence) coined the name, and I'm sure he speaks from experience. As do I as of yesterday, as one of the highlights of my weekend was the mega-cleaning of their cage which resulted in a Lovey bite.

 

Since their rescue, my cage-cleaning efforts have been limited pretty much to changing out the papers on the bottom of their cage. Aggressive little Lovey (I suspect) could skeletonize my exposed flesh in a second, and even though I've been patient and caring around her (and her beaky lunges have subsided somewhat as a result) I'm still a little fearful. I'm pretty sure she's guessed this. Thurston, bless him, is her hopelessly devoted boy toy -- clueless and lovesick and long-suffering. But Lovey is a cold and calculating harpy waiting for the day when I accidentally leave the cage door ajar so she can scissor my face from my skull like a can-opener. And until then she'll bide her time with silly Thurston, having birdy sex....

 

My biggest challenge has been how to get at the interior of their cage without being flayed alive, and I've put it off. And off. And off.... I wondered what would be the best (and safest) way to go about it. Should I let them out in an enclosed space, like the bathroom, and risk having them fly at the closed window or go right for my earlobes? Would they just naturally return to the cage when I was done with it? What if I had to leave the bathroom for something and they escaped? How hard would it be to catch them in a butterfly net if I had to? Would throwing a towel over them enrage Lovey such that I'd never be able to get near the cage again?.... 

 

So many things to consider.... But I couldn't stand their digs a second longer. It was now or never.

 

I'm happy to report that today they're clean and content, but at the expense of my entire Sunday and my thumb. And what I ended up doing was this: I outfitted an old birdcage with a water tube and enough paper to keep Lovey happily shredding her brains out for the rest of the day if necessary. Then I fashioned a square tube out of cardboard, one that would fit snuggly into the cage door, taped it together, then fed it from the door of the new cage to the door of the old one.

 

Lovey smelled a rat right off the bat and was highly suspicious, but when she saw all the paper on the other side of the little corridor she was through it in a heartbeat. Thurston, on the other hand, stood on this side of it and called to her. Back and forth she went, shredding paper in the new cage, tucking it into her butt feathers, and bringing it all back to the old cage. Don't ask me how I managed to get scaredy-cat Thurston over to the other side, but when I did he panicked. And, of course, he couldn't put two and two together and figure out how he suddenly found himself in this new environment.... Lovey sat in the tube and screamed at him but it didn't work. And when she hopped down to square off with him right to his face, I shut the cage door.

 

Easy-peasy.

 

Cleaning that hell hole was a pleasure. And pretty easy, too, as it turns out: Lovey's nest was a 'pooper'-maché creation that fell out in one big lump. Then it was all about the scrubbing and disinfecting. I added a furry 'love nest' that hung from the cage's rooftop, sort of a soft-sided triangular hammock that they could snuggle in. I clipped a new-fangled nesting box on the side and threw in enough flyers and junk mail to keep Lovey happily nestmaking for days. 

 

Then I grabbed the cardboard tube.

 

Lovey instantly knew what was going to happen. She dove for the door as I was trying to place the tube and slowly open it at the same time, and that's when she nailed me. Her bite wasn't nearly as bad as I was anticipating, but it was still a surprising pinch, and I yelled at her. And now I think she likes the idea that she got such a great reaction. (Dang. Back to square one again....)

 

Anyway. Thurston took forever again figuring out how to get to the other side, but Lovey's no-nonsense scolding helped. He claimed dibs on the love nest until she kicked him out. And last night I saw him sleeping on the top of it while she was inside, nibbling paper strips and chittering to herself..... 

 

And today they're back to being their horrid, noisy, nasty, delightful, sweet-faced, smiling selves. They may be ferocious little piranha birds, but they're all mine and I adore them.

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Meet the Newbies

Do not be fooled by their sweet faces....

In addition to these not-always-so-daily posts I also write a not-always-so-daily e-mail blast, and one of the things I like to include in each is the info provided by the fun folks at Punchbowl who provide my blog widget (scroll down at right and you'll see it).

Today when I clicked on the widget to get more info (it's National Hot Fudge Sundae Day, yay!), I also learned that this week is National Zookeeper's Week. Well, huh! With all the creatures I happily tend here at Tumbledown each day -- the monarch 'pillars; the grandbug's terrarium of pillbugs; the beta fish, cockatiel, housemouse, snakes, tarantula, blah, etc., fill-in-the-blank -- I feel like I should be taking the week off in celebration.

So in honor of my perceived 'zookeeperishness' I'll take this opportunity to share with you Tumbledown's most recent addition: meet 'Lovey' and 'Thurston,' a pair of rescued lovebirds (courtesy of my James, who isn't bothered by insane tropical bird noise, for which I'm totally grateful).

Lovey's on the left in the photo above. She looks all sweet and ladylike, doesn't she? Guess again! These were abandoned birds for a reason, and I have a hole in the thumb of my Menard's leather gardening gloves to prove it.

But I'm patient.
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