I'm a winner!

It depresses me how excited I am that I won Zuma on Sunday night. Is this the greatest accomplishment of my life? No, but still, I WON ZUMA! Take that, sun god.

In other news, I've started training the birds using a clicker, which, if you've watched The Dog Whisperer, you know what I'm talking about. But then, you've watched TDW and should be ashamed.

The theory is that you use the clicker as a "bridge stimulus" to let your animal know that what he's done is correct and a treat will follow shortly. Now, clicker training is heavily dependent upon the reward system, which only works if your animal likes rewards. Cyril will work with me and take his rewards for about five minutes and then he gets fed up and wants to go back to his cage. Pierre hardly eats anything and will only take a seed an hour from my hand, but Fritz, he surprised me. He let me work with him for a half hour and was such a little champ that, by the time we were done with our session, he'd let me touch his back without biting me and he would turn halfway around to get a seed.

I want to teach them all to play dead, pull a bucket up for a treat, pick up their toys and fly to me on command. I shall then open a circus and charge admission to earn back the money we've spent on bird treats.