Friday, December 30, 2005
More Pictures of the Kids

Yes as a matter of fact I am one of those crazy people who thinks of their animals as their kids! :-D

If you had animals like mine you would too.

'Course, if you had animals as smart as mine and you treated them like most people treat their pets you'd probably get an unpleasant present in your favorite shoes.

Friday, December 16, 2005
Tweetums

I have had the good fortune to be surrounded by some amazing creatures. This is one of them, a good friend of mine, "Tweetums". Tweetums is a Zebra Finch. He is not the first bird I have shared my home with, but he is by far one of the smallest. (When I lived in Hawaii I lived with an Umbrella Cockatoo named Baby.)

Until I met Tweetums, I lived under the misguided impression that bigger birds had more personality, and possibly even more intelligence, but he's set me straight. Tweetums was pushed out of his nest at a young age. Because of this, he has imprinted more on humans like a hand-fed baby bird. Early on we noticed he was very friendly and mellow compared to most finches. It was not long before we were able to get close enough to him to scratch him on the chin.

Now, we have been friends for many years. He always finds new and interesting ways to communicate with us and he tries to understand our crazy habits. I was tinkering with the rental digital camera from last evening's Pascucci's adventure, I wanted to see what it was really capable of. I took a bunch of low light photos of Tweetums while he was hopping around (this one is my favorite). I was not totally sure how he felt about it at first, but later when I went to cover him for the night, he hopped out of his nest again and started dancing around (not his usual evening behavior). So I grabbed the camera again! Well to make a long story a little shorter, we repeated that several times before I just had to slowly lower the lights to try to lull him to sleep. He is quite the ham, and really likes any interaction with other creatures.

So I have to wonder, are the creatures around me particularly amazing and I am just blessed to be around them. Or, is the potential there in most animals for this type of connection if you look for it. If I had to guess I'd say it's both. Regardless, Tweetums is a credit to his species and I will never look at another bird the same way after knowing him. There is much more going on there than you might think.