Rockstar has wanted a pet bird for awhile now. Last year, a classmate happened to catch her African Grey in the background of footage being used for their school project (to be precise, the bird was going “OMG” in the background of the initial cut 😀 ), and that sparked his curiosity. He promptly went to find channels like A Chick Called Albert (guy puts random doz supermarket quail’s eggs into incubator, one hatches, and – voila! A Youtube star is born! This is almost how they discovered Justin Bieber).
I especially liked when Albert ran for POTUS (President of the US; “All parties are willing to accept him, for he has a left wing… and a right wing” 😀 )
Many Vines are just timed music to the ridiculous plumed-head waving, dub-stepping and flapping that birds do naturally, drawing peals of laughter from the kids (and we all need a good clean laugh – last one in this clip’s the best –
https://youtu.be/ZsZiKVjzKtw
– this one’s from Cotton Candy; the yakkety Cockatoo running all over the apartment goes on for much longer and strings words and phrases together even more randomly in the original video)
…but there are also some inspiring ones from the Albert channel like Do Not Help A Hatching Egg (as in, too early and the bird dies, too late the bird also dies) where these huge hands are seen painstakingly opening a tiny quail’s egg with a matchstick.
I know what you’re thinking. Pet Rebound!
You’d be right. I threw myself into executing this for the kids particularly at the height of grieving for JD. As far as possible, pain should after all not be “wasted,” because it sucks so much. But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t challenged Rockstar to do his research in his spare time over the last few months and pledge to handle the cage cleaning – if given the option, he would not have minded doing his school Y6 show on birds (but what he did get is pretty cool too 🙂 ).
We’d been checking bird availability at the SPCA for maybe 6 months (if you cannot delay gratification that long, maybe longer, how will you ever stick it out for the lifetime of the animal). Initially there was never anything, and then for 1-2 months lovebirds kept popping up in pairs (as in, you have to take both birds because they are bonded). We’d read how if you want a lovebird to bond with you, you should get it alone.
Finally, a single one pops up on the adoption site: “Blackie”.
One morning while the kids are in school, I call ahead at the SPCA before they get back – we have never had birds before, and I want a proper look at whether I can support Rockstar’s budding bird habit before I feed this particular monster. HN has proven far more persistent than Rockstar in the taming of small furry animals (I do believe that caring for pets, or at least living things – one of HN’s favourite things in school is the large gardens where the kids are organised to tend to a large variety of flowering and leafy plants. Some even put Lego builds up there “to shelter slugs” – Things That Make You Go Awwwwwww – it brings out something desirable in a child’s personality, in a way that just being around only humans does not – because humans can be @ssholes in a way other living things cannot, so we could all use a little caring for other living things 🙂 Like, why else must they be on this earth right, besides to eat 😛 )…. So if Rockstar wants a bird then I’ve gotta see what I can do.
The handler shows me……. not one but five freaking lovebirds all perched in a row on a stick, nuzzling each other contentedly. Turns out they just rescued 4 more, and so “Blackie” has now made 4 other bond buddies. We must take either 2 or 3 together and never separate them when handling, or they might die of fright.
HOW INCONSIDERATE. The nerve of these things.
Also, the handler tells me they’ve all grown up flapping about in a large cage somewhere with little human interaction, and so we will likely have NO chance whatsoever of taming them to be like some of those in the cute Youtubes above. (The SPCA likes to dash all your hopes of being a Bird Ninja this way manage your expectations this way.)
After making us aware of the uphill task ahead (I want to say Did I Not Mention My Old Dog Has Just Died So My Tolerance Level For Animal Crap Is Pretty High Right Now In Fact You Could Say I Need This Crap), staff leave me to take a few pictures and videos, watch the animals awhile more, before returning to tell the kids that we will have to deal with 2-3 times the initially expected amount of animal poop relay all this to Rockstar when he gets off the school bus. He still wants to take a swing at it.
(Opportunity Cost Alert: Rockstar is of course aware that if we get the birds now, we’re not getting others later. It’s a great excuse way to cut “impulse purchases” – if you get something you don’t really want, maybe just because someone else found something they really love, you will no longer have the same resources available to get something else you might want more, should you then come across it in the near future.)
That’s how Rockstar comes to stand in front of the bird cage quietly to see if he can stick it out (for a good 45 minutes), even as HN entertains herself looking at all the other animals in the Small Animal Section. She observes the few male hamsters (Sophie, also adopted from the SPCA, still follows her everywhere and has taken to chewing holes in her pyjamas before bedtime most nights. HN insists on wearing the hole-y clothing like some badge of honour, so if you notice her in anything with little holes in them, that’s what the holes are.)
There is a brown snake nearby named Nagini (yes, after Voldemort’s pet and horcrux vessel), and a leopard gecko across the room, named Fire. Nagini appears to be quite unlike the snakes I used to see in the Penang Snake Temple as a kid, that mostly eat eggs (in those days many were green, venomous, and inhabited various potted plants – they get draped near the altars, where they eat the offerings in the night, too. I’d not heard of anyone getting bitten though, and sure enough I can find tourists complaining online that the snakes never stick their tongues out, “are they fake?” (no they’re not, if you tap on their heads they’ll slowly slither off their branches (I once saw a boisterous tourist do it, but I really don’t think you should touch them, they’re purportedly varied, and most are venomous) – I was told as a child that the incense smoke especially in the day when more visitors are burning offerings keeps them sluggish)). Nagini however looks more like a little python, and idly I guess she eats things like mice. I am not keeping frozen mice in our fridge with the kids’ school lunches so I don’t even ask.
We are discouraged from taking Fire because he eats live crickets and cockroaches, and the SPCA handler says they invariably get complaints from inexperienced owners about then having bug infestation. I can totally picture HN chasing hopping crickets and scurrying cockroaches about our living room at feeding time. (In other words, our neighbours would freaking kill us 😀 one of our neighbours has two female turtles who are over 10 years old and about the size of dinner plates btw, sometimes they crawl around the common corridor to stretch their legs)
Anyway. There is a difference in personality among the 5 lovebirds, that becomes apparent if you watch them long enough. Some of them are content to perch very close to each other and chirp a wide variety of sounds. They take very little interest in anything else going on around them (so they potentially don’t startle as easily either). Others are curious about what visitors might be doing outside their little cardboard box while still hiding in it, and after awhile we realise the most curious one is watching Rockstar as intently as Rockstar is watching them (to be fair, after about 20 minutes Nagini has also quietly raised her head from the depths of her coils, and is peering at Rockstar from behind her water tupperware. When we all come and look at her though, she goes back into hiding.)
When the SPCA handler approaches the birdcage, Most Curious Bird comes right out of the box and climbs up the bars inches from Rockstar.
No prizes for guessing who eventually follows him home.
“Sans” and “Savage Peach”
Smaller, less brightly coloured, most of his markings are muted by a blackish tinge. Doesn’t chirp as much. But he’s the most busybody bird of the bunch by far. (I say “he”, but in truth you need a blood test to accurately confirm the gender of your lovebirds, and the SPCA prefers not to expend valuable resources to test this. We are simply advised to remove any eggs we find from the cage. I don’t know how I’m going to look those birds in the eye if I take their eggs, so we keep giving them all these foraging activities because to bird brains (sorry :P) that apparently discourages them from laying eggs)
We also found a way to recycle HN’s old Elsa jigsaw pieces – parrot toys!
Sans’ companion bird is larger, much brighter coloured, and HN is pleased to be going home with a “free bird” (because we have to take two – in the days that follow however, this turns out to be a blessing in disguise because while not as shy as expected, these birds are very, very active – without a companion bird to entertain each other, even if they don’t sicken like the SPCA cautions they might if separated, they would probably chirp and whistle your ears out for attention).
Coincidentally, Savage Peach is LOUD, chirping at the top of her lungs, swinging vigorously and precariously from her perch and occasionally falling off with a crash (in other words, quite like HN :D). To match her noise levels, Sans resorts to plucking toys off the bars and dumping them to the floor of the cage with a crash.
This is Sans pulling jigsaw pieces off the rope – he also unhooks that purple ladder and flings it to the floor of the cage
This the kids on our first visit to Parrotshop in Wan Chai, which is where the SPCA advises us to go for an (inexpensive) cage and a few starter toys….
The smell of bird feed is overpowering, I can’t stand it <sheepish> though both kids say it’s not a bad smell. I still miss the smell of wet dog. There are also maybe 10 screechy parrots (but no lovebirds) who up the screeching when they see kids, and what looks like a toucan. We are told (at the time) that Mong Kok Bird Street is closed due to a bird flu alert, so then we try not to be around too many birds.
We recycle toddler toys and suitable little plastic Gacha prizes (like that pink slinky the parrots keep unwinding off the top), to keep them busy/foraging, not say, laying eggs.
A bit over a week now, they’ve been home. They fill the apartment in the day with chirps, whistles and loud squabbles. When we want them to shut up (:D), we cover the cage with a scarf – the longest they’ve taken to quiet down at “bedtime” is about 15 minutes, but first few mornings they woke us around 6am. Kids haven’t been late for school all week (for us this is a HUGE achievement ok!!)
HN now has them eating from a spoon, even when they have the same feed available in their bowls (the SPCA handler taught them how to best try to tame the birds – turns out he was an animal trainer at Ocean Park, before leaving to the States for further studies, and has only just gotten back to HK) and Rockstar is up to getting Sans (the more interactive one when no food is involved :D) to step on a perch he holds up. He cleans the cage in small increments as he goes about the day. No reward without risk or well, work, no pet without poop…
And so the saga continues…
