Why is It So Hard to Accept What is Readily Offered?

Since it's chilly, I placed a square of fake fur into a small box that Bug likes to climb in at night sometimes. A swatch of soft yellow yumminess for a certain little bird to snuggle into.

I should've known. He abhors it. If I leave a seedball in the fabric, he'll go get it. Snuggle? Hell no. Eeewww, he snorts, fabbbbricccc. Like his snunky little box is full of poop.

Tonight, a small cadre of trickotreaters came by, so I had to put the Bug away. I put him in his room with his drawbridge down, but the lights off. He could sit on his cage or go inside and sleep. I went in later to tuck him in and he was chortling softly, his bedtime cutie-pie dialogue. Hooray!, I thought. He's in the soft, yellow nest! I couldn't see him but found his little fuzzy box empty. No, instead, he was on top of his cage between the two sheets I used to cover his cage. He was tickled and giddy and silly with the sheer luxurious serendipity. I laughed and left him there. How could I disturb such utter satisfaction?

And how could've I know what would be perfect for him? He chose what suited him. I merely stumbled into his preference. I want him to love what I offered him, but this never works.

I need to go check on him again. He'd probably be fine with his cage door open and the room door shut. The cats are in the basement and the dogs are on the couch with me. What a little dude. Anything to keep him warm in this upcoming season of chilliness.

Why Bug Needs to Get a Damn Job

So.

So, it's getting colder--frost on the windshield, frost on the grass, the leaves almost fully off the trees. And I've turned on the heat in the house.

Before Bird, or BB, as we shall call it, we used to turn our thermostat at night to 59, close the bedroom door to keep the heat in, and pile a ton of down comforters on. Now we have this tiny creature, used to thick, humid air, and well, warmth.

So now we keep the thermostat at 64 most of the time; higher when we get up in the morning and when we get home. But mostly, it's a full five degrees warmer all the time.

Oil ain't cheap. But you all know this. But Bug doesn't.

So he should get a damn job to pay for the extra heat.

But he would protest, recounting an event last winter. Last winter I came home one day to the house at 47 degrees. I freaked. The little one is dead! He wasn't, but his tiny, scaled legs were cold and he was all fluffed up. (A bird can tolerate cooler temperatures if they don't fluxuate--for goodness sakes, Chicago has it's own population of Quaker parrots!) The pilot light on the furnace had gone out and a friend came over to rescue me in my icy panic. Soon, it was getting warmer upstairs, and everyone thawed out.

The mammals of the house, besides the humans, have fur. Yeah, they were cold, tucking their tails over their noses, but they got by. The bird, he's practically am exothermic/ heat-losing being. The smaller you are, the faster you cool. Smaller body volume to surface area ratio.

And now the air has dried out and he's sneezing--sinusitis? I got him a humidifier last winter to ease his nostrils. But it puts out cold steam--what a drag. He does twiddle and screech from the shower rod when I am in the bath, so he gets some tropical stem.

Sometimes I imagine living somewhere warm, where he could have an outside cage. I think he'd like the warmth but hate the isolation. He says yes (well, djesss) a lot when he's excited, but outside, alone, even where it's balmy, I think he'd scream til he was hoarse.

Gum Chewers Unite

Yesterday showcased a balmy, beautiful October evening, and I sat outside on the porch eating my dinner, my dogs staring at my plate. I turned to look in through the sliding glass door, to check on SSW's whereabouts. He was right in front of me, leaning toward the glass, staring at me with one beady eye from the ledge of his cage, chewing in the exact rhythm I was chewing. He had nothing in his mouth, however.

The Mirror Chewer, we should call him.

If I have gum, he acts like he has gum.

If I eat at the table, and I get his pestering body away from my plate, he goes to his cage and eats.

He's a communal diner, and I suppose we are his flock, his cohorts to share and steal and hoard food from each other.

Sometimes he's too social, he forgets to eat. Maybe he's a little skinny.

You can always tell if he's had a good eating day, though--when I get home and his water bowl is a soup of disintegrating parrot pellets, like the last bits left in the milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl.

I imagine him throughout the day dipping each cracker with relish. I imagine him shredding some paper in his cage, taking a quick nap, then going back to the cracker ceremony.

Maybe I should read the dregs in the bottom of his dish, like one reads tea leaves. It might only translate to Feed me.

Avian Superhero?

Maybe his secret identity is Flash or Presto or The Vapor. Perhaps time elongates when I blink, preventing me from witnessing his quick passage from A to B. Blink, and he's adhered to the front of your shirt, your shoulder, around the edge of a closing door. He's almost inside the fridge, he's on his cage you're cleaning, he's attacking the rag you're using to clean the poop off the linoleum. Pfffffshtt!

The lime green into amber of his feathers hint at an otherworldly origin. Nothing around here looks remotely like him. Maybe South America is another planet, I don't know. The map on my wall says it exists.

The only thing this superhero is afraid of is planes flying over the house. Large, loud bird silhouettes.

Right now the Shapeshifter is eating a bit of apple. Quick calories for some imminent mission?

He calls out to the high-pitched screech-pitch in the Beck song "Devil's Haircut." Maybe it's a secret code.

Now's he's chortling out some Morse chirping and pausing. Hmm-- Then tap tap tap-tap with his beak.

Autumnal

A house finch lands to drink from the dog water bowl on the porch. It looks in the sliding glass door, dips its beak into the bowl, looks back into the house. I catch its eye. It flies off. A flurrying of small brown bodies alights, shifts, moves into the trees.

The leaves are starting to fall. Walking the dogs comes with the sound of brittle leaves beneath your feet.

Angle of sun on your face, the sky cloudless--