All Your Chair Are Belong To Us

December 2, 2013 Timothy Price4 Comments

Every time Laurie gets up from of her chair at the end of the table, Guildenstern gets in it. Once she moves Guildenstern off her chair and sits back down, René bombs his way over to her, flying from chair to chair (three chairs in all) to get across the counter and finally onto the table and over to Laurie. I didn’t have the best lighting for capturing René in flight in these shots, so I set up a flash and tried to get him to do is chair to chair flight again, but he would have nothing to do with flying to the chair with that new fangled light source off to the side of it.

I adapted today’s title from the video “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”, a video that goes back to 2001. The title of the video was taken from a line in the 1991 introduction to an adaption of the arcade game “Zero Wing” that had really bad Japanese-to-English translation. Around our house, whenever you get up from a chair, a cat or a bird is likely to occupy it because to them “all your chair are belong to us!”

Morning Coffee and a Bath

November 11, 2013 Timothy Price15 Comments

Beaker was ringing his bell this morning for some of Laurie’s coffee. He drank the morning brew, closed his eyes, savored the flavor, then went of to his water dish and took a bath.

Macro Morning

July 1, 2013 Timothy Price9 Comments

I got out my macro lens this morning and René and I started crawling around under squash leaves to get photos of a bee inside a squash blossom. The bee was pretty cute, but after several snaps it got tired of having a lens in its face and showed me a hefty pair of bee fangs. I can’t resist doing macro shots of damselflies and dragonflies. I sneak up on them until they fly, freeze in place and wait for them to come back (they often do), sneak up a little closer — they fly, I freeze, they come back — and the process continues until I either get the shots I want or they decide I’m too close and don’t come back.

Mama Manx has a cave in the cucumber patch where she lays on the cool mulch under the shade of the cucumber leaves. When one of us gets too close to the entrance of her cucumber cave, she darts out like a moray eel, chatters at us, then retreats back into her cave.

Puck is working on his memoirs, “Don’t Puck With Me”, and while he was taking a break he pestered Laurie for some attention while she was reading. Guildenstern was intently playing with clover under my chair while I sat on the deck enjoying the fine summer morning.

Birded

June 22, 2013 Timothy Price3 Comments

Sophia was begging to get out and sit on me while I was sitting at the table working on photos at Tristan’s and David’s. Apparently I remind her of her previous owner and she got very excited to be out with me, started grooming me, and regurgitating for me, which is a very loving gesture coming from an African Grey! There is a family of quail in their back yard. Mama and papa quail sit on top of the wall and act bewildered that the chicks can’t get up on the wall with them. The chicks blend into the bark, mulch and wall.

Coordinated Colors

May 4, 2013 Timothy Price4 Comments

The coordinated colors of downtown and our birds.

Parrot Formerly Known As Joey

March 26, 2013 Timothy Price8 Comments

René, the Eclectus Parrot formerly known as Joey (see Joey’s Big Adventure) has come to live with us. Tristan’s household has too much activity for him, so he was getting over stimulated and stressed out. He is already happy only having to share a room with our Conure, Beakers. Laurie had Beakers out in his space in the kitchen and René was still in the study, so the birds started ringing their bells back and forth. I told Laurie they were “texting” each other. Rene’ came out when I got home and had dinner with me. Rosencrantz was sticking his tail in René’s face while he was pestering me and René was seriously thinking about biting Rosencrantz’ tail, otherwise René and Rosencrantz didn’t react to each other in the least.

The almost full moon was beautiful peeking through the clouds tonight. I can’t resist moon and cloud photos.

Lights, Action, Birds

January 18, 2013January 18, 2013 Timothy Price1 Comment

We went in to see how Tristan organized her study space when we dropped her off after school late this afternoon, and I noticed the lights in their stairwell made a very nice design. Sophia always does the same pose whenever she sees a camera — a kind of pensive, sultry look — and René, the Eclectus parrot former known as Joey, is looking really good these days. Tristan said she noticed that René is not the brightest bird on the block, but then she is comparing him to her African Greys. Most parrots have intellects comparable to 2 to 3 year old children; whereas African Greys have intellects comparable to 5 year old children. So while most parrots are very interactive, inquisitive, and can often mimic people very well, African Greys can actually reason with you.

Joey’s Big Adventure

December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 Timothy Price12 Comments

Tristan adopted an Eclectus Parrot named Joey which turned out to be a rescue. Joey, who is probably around 9 years old, had been left in a house that one of Tristan’s friends moved into. The bird apparently had not ever had its beak trimmed and there was nothing in its cage for it to chew on to keep its beak trimmed back, so its beak had grown out so long that it was rubbing the feathers off Joey’s chest. Joey’s beak would have punctured his sternum and killed him if it had been left untrimmed much longer. The feathers on his head look good, but the rest of his feathers are scraggly and rough because he couldn’t groom himself with his long beak. He also hadn’t bathed himself or been bathed in who knows how long, so he smelled bad as well. Tristan called the vet on our way back to her house with Joey, and fortunately they had an opening within an hour, so we drove straight over to PetsMart and got Joey a new cage and lots of chew toys before taking him to the vet.

Joey was very well-behaved in the carrier as we drove around. He imitated noises from video games and gave us an occasional squawk. It didn’t take long after we got into PetsMart for people to start noticing him making cute noises. He squawked loudly at the sight of dogs, which really got the attention of the other shoppers. Once we got to the vet, Tristan turned the carrier around so the door was against the back of the bench so Joey wouldn’t react to the dogs in the waiting area. He would peek at me through the holes in the carrier, but when I first tried to photograph him peeking at me, he would back away to the other end of the carrier and then come back up and peak at me again with on eye, back off and peak at me again with the other eye. I finally got some photos of him peeking at me, but it was like a game to him.

His next adventure was his absolute refusal to get in the basket so the Vet-tech could weigh him in the exam room. He got on Tristan’s shoulder, then I got him on my arm, but when we got the basket near him, he ran upon my shoulder, then ran back and forth from one shoulder to the other ducking the Vet-tech. Then he got onto Tristan’s arm and climbed up and took refuse on her shoulder until the Vet came in. The Vet stood there in shock for an instance and then said she had never seen a beak that had grown out that long before. As we gave the Vet as many details as we had learned about Joey in the hour we had him, he sat on Tristan’s shoulder and groomed her until he tore off her pesky glasses that were getting in his way. The Vet got him wrapped in a towel and took him back to trim his beak and draw blood so they could test him for communicable diseases. When the Vet-tech brought him back in to us with his newly trimmed beak, Joey was happily chewing on the towel, something he hadn’t been able to do for most of his life.

He was pretty traumatized, and rode home in total silence, looking tired and worn out from his big adventure. When we got him home, he sat on a roost and posed proudly for me showing off his newly trimmed beak, then he watched me put his new cage together. As he watched Tristan and I fill his new cage up with things to climb on and lots of toys to play with and chew on, he started making cute noises again. When we put him in the cage he first checked out the water dish, and then started messing with the food. At first he turned his head sideways to compensate for a long beak, then he discovered he could pick up the food without cocking his head and started happily rooting around in the mixture of seeds, nuts and bird crackers able to eat normally for the first time in many years.