Sunday, September 25, 2005

Fools. We are fools.

Why oh why do we ever go to the pet store? I know we're weak, so very weak. But, we needed to get a carrier for Constanze for emergencies or for going to the vet, so we started at Pet Professionals, the phenomenal bird store in Redmond, where all of the birds are out of their cages and people bring their pets to interact and anyone can play with the birdies as long as they like. I love this place, and it doesn't make me sneeze, which is shocking. They have three titanic and extremely chatty Macaws, a whole flock of African Greys, Moluccan Cockatoos, every type of conure, cockatiels a ramalamadingdong, and just every other kind of finch, canary, parrot and everything you could imagine. All of the birds can be handled and poor Christian now realizes that he wants a big bird. Sorry, honey, our house is done full up. The Moluccan we held was so flipping spectacular and with the most schmoopy personality that I just wanted to grab him, bury my face in his feathers and call him my poopsie doo. They, however, didn't have a carrier, so we went to Denny's Pet World, the pet store of doom. Why doom? They sell Parrotlets. Again, weak. We thought that getting a cagemate for our girl so she doesn't get too bored when we're at work would help with her temperment, as being bored makes birds pluck. We were told by the owner of PP that the only cage mate for a female Pacific Parrotlet is a male Pacific Parrotlet. Sigh. They had a gorgeous male the bird girl described as her nemesis, so we thought PERFECT! We didn't want a bird Constanze could bully, the little beast. We bought him, and Christian got to name him. It was his turn. His name is Fritz, after both the German parrot in the Tiki Room and the name Christian and Sal used to give all of the WWII German fighter pilots in their models. As the Stanzster has a cold, we needed to keep them apart for three weeks, so we set up the horrible little cage Stanze came in and placed them about three feet apart. Good holy God. The noise is deafening. As soon as Fritz saw Constanze, he started speaking in a piercing, shrieking voice and she responded: chirp, CHIRP, chirp, CHIRP, chirp CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP. I had no idea our bird could be this loud. She whipped herself into a frenzy. She started climbing the walls of the cage and aggressively biting the bars trying to get out, so I opened the cage and she flap, flap, flapped her way over to him and tried to preen him through the bars of his cage. Ah, love at first sight. Or puberty. Or lust. Or whatever.



Pray for us and for our sanity.

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