Category Archives: pets

Another cockatoo in our house

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Last weekend I picked up another cockatoo to add to our menagerie of pets.  His name is Niko and he is an umbrella cockatoo.  He’s about three years old.  Below is a photo of him:

From Niko – November 2009

I think we’re pretty well insane for doing this, but oh well.  We’re learning more and more about how demanding and complicated these beautiful birds can be.  Niko seems to be a very good bird so far but we are still getting acquainted.  He’s nipped some of us a few times, and he’s a little scary at times because he’s so big in comparison to our Goffin’s cockatoo, Frosty.  Unlike Frosty, he can say several things, including “I love you,” “Pretty, pretty bird,” and more.  We worried about how well he would get along with Frosty because both of them have been “only birds” ’til now.  So far they are doing pretty well together, sometimes spending time grooming each other.  Niko also can do some pretty wild and crazy antics just like you see in some YouTube videos like this one.  He also enjoys chasing after our golden retriever, Champ.

Umbrella cockatoos live at least 80 years, so this is a major, lifetime commitment.  Like I said, we’re probably crazy to do this, but so far it is working out.

Back to work

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It’s a dark, rainy Monday and the weather matches my mood as I get back into the swing of things at work after a nice but short vacation. I really think I need to be more like Tigger and less like Eyore but it’s hard to fight years of pessimism.

We had a really good time last week on Thursday through Saturday, going out to eat most of the time, watching a movie in the theater (such a rare occurrence), visiting the Field Museum, and buying some new pets to add to our already chaotic household. Yesterday we didn’t go anywhere or do anything; I think the highlight of the whole day was when I went to McDonald’s late in the evening to buy milkshakes for everyone!

I’m still trying out and getting used to the new stuff in WordPress 2.5. I love the new photo gallery functionality but find it very frustrating at this point because there is so little documentation on how best to make use of it. My plan is to redo all photos and host them here on this blog rather than on Flickr and/or Picasa, eventually.

I’m trying out the WordPress.com stats plugin and liking it so far. Also, I’ve added a sidebar widget for my Twitter posts using the great Twitter Tools plugin. Oddly enough, two different people have contacted me since I moved to a new host, asking me if I would allow them to advertise on this site. Weird. Also, I still have really messed up permalinks, unfortunately. And I am just about as confused as ever in terms of deciding on using categories vs. tags.

OK, now back to the real world.

New pets added to our menagerie

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This beautiful bird is the type of bird we bought Dove - Jardim dos Louros, Funchal, Madeiratoday at the Spring show of the Greater Chicago Cage Bird Club held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds. None of us had ever been to one of these shows. We decided to go because Tristan really wanted to get a bird as a pet. He still remembers Ben and Jerry, our two parakeets we had many years ago when he was little. We went expecting just to have a good time looking around and seeing some interesting birds. But when Tristan and I saw an Asian American lady with two cages full of these birds, we thought they were quite irresistible. The woman who raised them gave us them for $5 off the list price because we were buying them for the children. I have never seen such birds before. They are called diamond doves (Geopelia cuneata — see more information at http://www.diamonddove.com/) and the specific kind we purchased is a blue diamond dove. We were able to purchase a pair; the male is about six months old and the female is about a year old, we were told. I think these birds are originally from Australia.

We bought a cage and food for the newest additions to our menagerie, and at the moment they are cuddling together going to sleep for the night.

After thinking about names for a while, we decided to call them “Onslow” and “Daisy” in tribute to two characters from our favorite BBC show, Keeping Up Appearances.

(Photo Credit: jmaximo)