major updates: pics, birthdays, birds, and Lohi'au

I owe major updates and comments and whatnot. I'm sorry I've fallen off the earth, but it's all been LEIK WHOA.

Well first of all, as I mentioned, last Saturday was Spencer's high school graduation. I thought I'd go in there all chill and mellow and whatnot, but then when he came back down the aisle after the ceremony I got all teary eyed, of course. I took a ton of pics (which I won't post here) and I still sort of can't believe it. It just all is going too quickly. Afterwards we all went to this beautiful restaurant on the water in Easthampton, where they played Bob Marley and you could watch the boats go by, and the food took like an hour to get there. I didn't get home till around 6.

The next day, Mom and I drove out to pick up Jo-chan for her pre-birthday birthday party / shopping thingie. Mom and I listened to my CD's all the way there, me narrating the entire time ("This is 'Lies For The Liars' by The Used, but it should really be called 'I Hate You Gerard Way, Please Take Me Back' because [explain the whole band / brokeback tour-bus soap opera stuff] and in THIS song it says blah blah which is funny because in THAT song it says etc. etc...." Ridiculous but my Mom smiles and nods anyway.) We got in really late and Jo-chan was playing Silent Hill, and then I took over playing it for a while. Monday, I switched some birds around and got Truffles (starling from Laura) and Tim (grackle from work) into the aviary, and got my nice hammock up in the yard. While I was doing this, Jo-chan was just hanging around the yard, playing with the dogs or swimming. Then we went out shopping and Jo-chan picked out a bunch of stuff for her birthday. We also got ice cream and tried to think of a movie to watch later. Also, we stopped at SITF to see some of the animals, and we visited with Tucker for a while.

After ice cream cake and prezzies and stuff like that, I finally decided that the movie should be a kind of rite of passage; after all Jo-chan is 15 now, and I thought, "It's time." So I busted out The Usual Suspect, all the while warning her that the language was atrocious (but funny) and the violence was graphic etc. She loved the movie (how could you not?) especially the ending, and commented that perhaps it'd been a while since I'd seen that movie, because she'd seen a lot worse in terms of violence and language. Which.... yeah, of course. I forget these things. I also had to skip Kung Fu this night, because of party and movie night etc. Jo-chan had to leave the next day (which always sucks) and I had to work.

The next day, Tuesday, brought a whole bunch of crazy animals to me. I went to work with no birds at all and came home with five. One that I did not take home with me was this beautiful baby osprey with deformed legs. (Which, I'm sorry to say, does not bode well. They hunt with their legs.) But I fell directly in love with him and I got to feed him for a while. ( This is how a baby osprey eats. )

You can't tell me that's not the cutest thing you've seen.

Tuesday also brought me three hatchling starlings (one a runt, two fallen about 20 feet from a nest onto pavement--I get that every year, don't I?--and lying on the ground in 93 degree heat for who knows how long. They were heat-stroking out, all limp and panting and not gaping,) and a nestling/fledgling grackle so covered in mites he was (and still is) totally anemic that he's white where he should be pink and/or yellow, unable to swallow his food and just doing badly all around. My poor baby. :(

And it also brought me Lohi'au, whom I have already mentioned. And with Lohi'au, a whole slew of problems that just might be worth it after all.

Okay, first of all, realize that I've been asking the universe for a crow for a while now. I felt like I was ready to keep a non-releasable one, but not a healthy, releasable one. I keep asking myself, what if I had wings and then someone stuck me in a cage just because they wanted to keep me around? But if he was non-releasable in any way, then I would keep him. So when I first saw Lohi'au, skinny but gaping for food and jumping around, I thought, "This little guy will be perfect with some spit and polish. I'll keep him for a few days then give him to Laura so her crows can raise him." I actually called Laura Tuesday night to tell her I had gotten this wonderful baby crow, and what my plans were for him. She asked me how old he was and I told her, a real baby, his tail hadn't even grown out yet. This was the first red flag, because Laura says you never see crows out of the nest that young, not unless they were rejected for some reason. She felt--had the gut feeling--something was wrong with him, that he had some other issue. Oh, the other thing was that I had found two maggots on the newspaper of the cage he was in. These were mystery maggots, as I looked him over top to bottom and could not find a single wound on him. I even smelled him (you know, you can smell rot) but he just smelled like a crow, nothing else. (And crows really do smell like other crows, healthy crows have the same smell. Except Tucker; he smells a little different, a little more like the entire clinic.)

Well, I didn't press the matter. You can see I spent some time with him because he is such a cool little bird, but I limited that time because I didn't want to tame him.

( Incidentally, this is how a baby crow eats. )

OBNOXIOUS AND ADORABLE!

( This is the story of how it almost ended and what might come next. )

So it's not something I'm taking lightly. In fact I'm being kind of neurotic over it while everyone around me, who watched him sit on my shoulder and preen my hair all day was saying, "It's a done deal" and "the bird is already yours" and "how could you think about getting rid of him?" But it's a big deal to me! Already tomorrow I have to put him into a bigger cage because he's getting bored and frustrated in the carrier.

But the bird has awesome energy, I mean just look at him:


FEED ME!!! Isn't that hilarious?

Anyway, so that's where I'm at right now. What's gonna happen is, I'm going away to Florida next month and Laura is going to take all my birds while I'm away. She's going to put Lohi'au with the other crows to see how he does. If he is perfect and he gets wild and he understands crows and he can survive in the wild, she'll know. She's the local authority on crows. And if that's the case, I'll gladly let him go and be a crow. But if not, you know, I'll figure it out.

major updates: pics, birthdays, birds, and Lohi'au

I owe major updates and comments and whatnot. I'm sorry I've fallen off the earth, but it's all been LEIK WHOA.

Well first of all, as I mentioned, last Saturday was Spencer's high school graduation. I thought I'd go in there all chill and mellow and whatnot, but then when he came back down the aisle after the ceremony I got all teary eyed, of course. I took a ton of pics (which I won't post here) and I still sort of can't believe it. It just all is going too quickly. Afterwards we all went to this beautiful restaurant on the water in Easthampton, where they played Bob Marley and you could watch the boats go by, and the food took like an hour to get there. I didn't get home till around 6.

The next day, Mom and I drove out to pick up Jo-chan for her pre-birthday birthday party / shopping thingie. Mom and I listened to my CD's all the way there, me narrating the entire time ("This is 'Lies For The Liars' by The Used, but it should really be called 'I Hate You Gerard Way, Please Take Me Back' because [explain the whole band / brokeback tour-bus soap opera stuff] and in THIS song it says blah blah which is funny because in THAT song it says etc. etc...." Ridiculous but my Mom smiles and nods anyway.) We got in really late and Jo-chan was playing Silent Hill, and then I took over playing it for a while. Monday, I switched some birds around and got Truffles (starling from Laura) and Tim (grackle from work) into the aviary, and got my nice hammock up in the yard. While I was doing this, Jo-chan was just hanging around the yard, playing with the dogs or swimming. Then we went out shopping and Jo-chan picked out a bunch of stuff for her birthday. We also got ice cream and tried to think of a movie to watch later. Also, we stopped at SITF to see some of the animals, and we visited with Tucker for a while.

After ice cream cake and prezzies and stuff like that, I finally decided that the movie should be a kind of rite of passage; after all Jo-chan is 15 now, and I thought, "It's time." So I busted out The Usual Suspect, all the while warning her that the language was atrocious (but funny) and the violence was graphic etc. She loved the movie (how could you not?) especially the ending, and commented that perhaps it'd been a while since I'd seen that movie, because she'd seen a lot worse in terms of violence and language. Which.... yeah, of course. I forget these things. I also had to skip Kung Fu this night, because of party and movie night etc. Jo-chan had to leave the next day (which always sucks) and I had to work.

The next day, Tuesday, brought a whole bunch of crazy animals to me. I went to work with no birds at all and came home with five. One that I did not take home with me was this beautiful baby osprey with deformed legs. (Which, I'm sorry to say, does not bode well. They hunt with their legs.) But I fell directly in love with him and I got to feed him for a while. ( This is how a baby osprey eats. )

You can't tell me that's not the cutest thing you've seen.

Tuesday also brought me three hatchling starlings (one a runt, two fallen about 20 feet from a nest onto pavement--I get that every year, don't I?--and lying on the ground in 93 degree heat for who knows how long. They were heat-stroking out, all limp and panting and not gaping,) and a nestling/fledgling grackle so covered in mites he was (and still is) totally anemic that he's white where he should be pink and/or yellow, unable to swallow his food and just doing badly all around. My poor baby. :(

And it also brought me Lohi'au, whom I have already mentioned. And with Lohi'au, a whole slew of problems that just might be worth it after all.

Okay, first of all, realize that I've been asking the universe for a crow for a while now. I felt like I was ready to keep a non-releasable one, but not a healthy, releasable one. I keep asking myself, what if I had wings and then someone stuck me in a cage just because they wanted to keep me around? But if he was non-releasable in any way, then I would keep him. So when I first saw Lohi'au, skinny but gaping for food and jumping around, I thought, "This little guy will be perfect with some spit and polish. I'll keep him for a few days then give him to Laura so her crows can raise him." I actually called Laura Tuesday night to tell her I had gotten this wonderful baby crow, and what my plans were for him. She asked me how old he was and I told her, a real baby, his tail hadn't even grown out yet. This was the first red flag, because Laura says you never see crows out of the nest that young, not unless they were rejected for some reason. She felt--had the gut feeling--something was wrong with him, that he had some other issue. Oh, the other thing was that I had found two maggots on the newspaper of the cage he was in. These were mystery maggots, as I looked him over top to bottom and could not find a single wound on him. I even smelled him (you know, you can smell rot) but he just smelled like a crow, nothing else. (And crows really do smell like other crows, healthy crows have the same smell. Except Tucker; he smells a little different, a little more like the entire clinic.)

Well, I didn't press the matter. You can see I spent some time with him because he is such a cool little bird, but I limited that time because I didn't want to tame him.

( Incidentally, this is how a baby crow eats. )

OBNOXIOUS AND ADORABLE!

( This is the story of how it almost ended and what might come next. )

So it's not something I'm taking lightly. In fact I'm being kind of neurotic over it while everyone around me, who watched him sit on my shoulder and preen my hair all day was saying, "It's a done deal" and "the bird is already yours" and "how could you think about getting rid of him?" But it's a big deal to me! Already tomorrow I have to put him into a bigger cage because he's getting bored and frustrated in the carrier.

But the bird has awesome energy, I mean just look at him:


FEED ME!!! Isn't that hilarious?

Anyway, so that's where I'm at right now. What's gonna happen is, I'm going away to Florida next month and Laura is going to take all my birds while I'm away. She's going to put Lohi'au with the other crows to see how he does. If he is perfect and he gets wild and he understands crows and he can survive in the wild, she'll know. She's the local authority on crows. And if that's the case, I'll gladly let him go and be a crow. But if not, you know, I'll figure it out.