aquarium invasion

we have a snail. a very, very tiny snail. the odd thing is, we don’t know how it got into the fish tank. we have not purchased or found/rescued a snail. we feed them dry flake food that clearly did not have a snail in it. we give them tap water (treated of course, but clearly snail-free.) a few days ago, it just appearedand took up residence at the top of the castle ruins. so far the plecos, who also reside in and feed off of the castle don’t seem to mind. the tank criminals (the murdering zebra danios) don’t seem to mind. we don’t mind.

 it’s just… whence came snaily?

animal cruelty hidden behind a shiny clean place

so this made us pretty darn angry. i won’t say the name of the pet store here (if you’re curious, i will tell you in an email) but we found a very bad situation with a bunch of birds a while back. strangely, in a place that had immaculate fish tanks, happy rodents, and well hydrated lizards in roomy habitats. the friendly staff seemed to know their animals and enjoy their jobs. and then we tuck back into the area (not visible from the entrance, right next to the employees only area) where the birds are kept. one, a very cute little conure is in a cage with only one perch (that is far too large for his feet) NO TOYS and a seed-heavy diet. he is of course bored, cranky, itchy and in need of a trim. we were told that he is a biter (we found this to be patently untrue) and we were also shocked to see that his asking price is about $200 above reasonable. this poor bird has been in the pet store for months.

then there was the rather small cage full of eight love birds–four pairs. now i have mentioned this before, i’m sure, but birds tend to be very racist. they had three varieties of green (peach face, black face, and i’m not sure) in with a pair of yellow. one little yellow bird had a bleeding wound on the back of its neck. the other was blind in one eye and was close to losing two toes from trauma. we had to call over an employee, explain that these birds can not be housed together, and accept his response that he would talk to his manager.

so here’s what i think. what right does a pet store have to offer birds for sale when nobody knows how to properly care for them? do we report them, knowing that they are better than most establishments with most varieties of pets? so far we’ve decided to go back and check to see if any changes have been made. we are also talking to all bird people we know to see if anyone might be convinced to take in a love bird or conure. we of course have no space or time for yet another bird rescue.

when we bought our baby red eared slider (turtle) for $15 and ended up paying over $100 in vet fees when he caught a respiratory infection–we thought about all the other babies for sale, and realized most of them would never survive in other people’s homes. why do so many people think that they can force creatures to be pets, taking them away from their natural environments, and then not be responsible about their emotional and physical well being? see, i’m not allowed to rant about this, because i have many pets. and it’s arrogant of me to think that we take better care of our pets than ‘people’ do. alright, so i’m arrogant and self-righteous and angry. there are wars and genocides and plagues and all sorts of horrific grand scale things going on that i could be getting angry about, and i am, in a distant sort of way. but someone who isn’t busily blowing up laboratories and throwing paint on (faux!) fur coats has to think about one little blind yellow bird. that i am angry about in a very present way. (could you tell?)

robust appearances notwithstanding

one of the very jolly and healthy looking yellow fishes is hurt. someone has gnawed away most of its tail, possibly because it is sick, and possibly because one of the two murdering fishes was feeling cantankerous. worrying over this fish is an absurd and tiny replica of other current events.

meanwhile i’m watching some terrific lightning. the sound of the various pet’s filters is drowning out the sound of the rain. i have a bizarre impression that the lightning is happening in a dry world. this will fade quickly when i wake up and see that i don’t need to water any plants. i have an announcement to make. the small blue potato that was (perhaps accidentally?) left on the kitchen windowsill to sprout ridiculous appendages, and which i put into the dirt two weeks ago, has now started to grow in earnest, with real leaves coming out. the little things, the little things.

more lightning. when in lancaster a while back a group of us sat on the porch a-storm watching and witnessed the most spectacular displays i’ve seen to date. the view was completely unobstructed for miles in several directions and we could see each bolt hit the ground–sometimes splitting in two or even three on the way. ridiculously bright and so very loud.

earlier today i was watching anatomy, which i had seen before but which still unnerved me. not by virtue of it’s horror filmness. skip ahead if you are someone who hasn’t seen it, might, and would care if i’m giving something away. there is an underground organization (which the characters compare to freemasons, or elite and secret fraternities) called the anti-hippocratics that i find absolutely horrifying, especially within the realm of today’s health care situation. some of you may have heard the term in reference to nazi doctors and certain experiments and medical advances. their apparent premise is to advance medicine no matter the cost or the method. there have been heated discussions over whether and how to use some of the information nazi doctors learned by methods nearly all the world would consider immoral. the other side of the discussion is that information should be amoral, and taken wherever possible. now i know better than to accept whole hog anything learned from a work of fiction–especially fiction that is loosely based on reality… but i wonder. if, as the movie suggests, these practices of exploration (killing an interesting patient just to see how they work inside, for example) were going on long before wwII (which wouldn’t surprise me) and since (who could know?) what advances in medicine would not have occurred? if someone told me they had figured out how to prevent cancer or erradicate hiv by experimenting on the prison population without their knowledge or consent, how would i feel? how would you? would any of us be able to deny the cure? or do we secretly want the ruthless and amoral ones to go on, even while we condem them, because the riteous are just too damned slow? no rabbit was ever exposed to my leave-in conditioner of course, but many people use insulin derived from pigs and i have no qualms about how we figured that one out. but how far up the food chain does it go? where is the line where we have to stop saying we are entitled and find another way? why has our president, puppet moron that he is, become so powerful in the field of medicine? who should define the line for us instead?

ugh. now i’ve gone and worked myself up. and i started out talking about fish. i’ve noticed that i want to be in a good day and talk about a bad one. i can see why heat waves go hand in hand with crime waves… it’s too hot to do anything but sit and think and thinking leads to no good when it’s this hot. maybe if i go to sleep now in the air conditioning i’ll think… i dunno, whether it will be a lady bug year up in the catskills or a fly year.  

the miracle of life

not me you dopes, quit worrying.

the love birds! there is an egg! we think it is empty but can’t be sure, and it’s pretty obvious there is another one in sprunt and (she! now we know) will lay that one soon. eggs! eeeeeek!

 we have just built them a nesting box which is scrapped together, but will do for now. in about three weeks we’ll see if there are baby birds, and then figure out what to do. thankfully, they have an enormous cage so if there will be new birds, there’s room.

in the past few days, many things have gone wrong. including a nasty fall on our lethal steps which resulted in a very VERY large bruise on my right butt that resembles a picasso face. can’t sit down at all. not fun. also, printer going belly up right in the middle of a job (by that i mean work rather than a print job) and all sorts other nasties.

but! this morning, someone waited in a parking space for me while i tooled around the block (a FREE one) and then the folks at physical therapy gave me two ice packs to take home for my butt (hee hee, but seriously it did help) and then i ran into a city gardener who chatted with me and gave me nearly a whole bag of peat moss for my garden, and THEN THERE WAS AN EGG.

how do i feel abou this news?

we have finally been given a closing date for menopause the musical… followed by a theoretical reopening. not sure whether i will believe anything until a paper to sign is shoved under my nose, but at least it is news. the thought of unemployment is the equivalent to finding slugs in the garden–they are gross and creepy but ultimately manageable as long as you don’t turn your back on them.  the thought of doing some other show for a while… hmm. whatever word out there means simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated.  that’s it, i suppose.

meanwhile, the love birds seem to pay no mind to fred (better than the competitive screeching and flapping that occurs when we bring cricket into their room) and cricket (or beakley) and fred find each other very interesting. we’ll wait a while until we let them get closer than 6″ apart, which is slightly greater than the lunging distance puff is capable of.  at the pet store the other day we met a couple crazier than us by several animals. they had many birds, cats, dogs, small mammals and others, totally in the low 20’s… so world, we may be crazy, but less so.

the murdering fish have gotten overwhelmed by all the other nice fish and have turned on each other finally. one of them is missing pieces and will die soon. i absolutely forbid anyone from drawing any sociological conclusions from our fish tank any more. in return, i will let you know what happens when we have only one murderer left.

bed time for me. we watched children of men and it got my mind all a-working on some thought or other and i think i’m finally settling down. i’ve said finally far more times than my level of impatience at the entire world merits. think of them all as possibly one ‘at last’

see, i’m back

right. nephew, amazing. younger sister, new job in publishing (that pays far more than mine!) and fabulous single bdrm apt in brooklyn. cousin matched for residency at columbia presbyterian hospital (where i was born) in nyc. oh–and a dear friend landed a very deserved musical theatre gig at the beach in florida for two months.

cooked a turkey for the first time since college–i suck at flipping turkeys. we’ve been having people over to the house more which is making us happy, and keeping the house neat. rewind! our vermont based friend stayed a whole week and we had a good visit. went bowling in jersey after visiting the zoo. and, per usual habit, ate at diners. he eats jelly. all alone, with nary a muffin in sight. lonely, lonely, eaten jelly.

after vermont-boy ran away, my sister arrived. we had a marathon day of tea and scones at the pink rose bakery (for her, for me, early morning p.t. session…) followed by a tornado of clothing at the curiosity shoppe (on 4th just north of south–go see!) where she made a killing (no thread was harmed in the shopping of that afternoon) followed by the flower show. doo-doo-doo dooooo! flower show. with “ireland” as the theme. the very prehistoric display with craftily crafted dinos was splendid. as were many others. the leprechaun statues and pots of faux gold were less our style… a plethora of rhododendron and a somewhat homogeneous collection of plants in several displays that put the show as a whole behind last year’s, but still very much worth our time and money. some excellent mini-irises, lovely window boxes, many many cacti (cactuses sounds better but looks funny) and a honey booth. of course a few plants came home and all but one are thriving. the brazilian firecrackers, they dried up crinkly after only two days. the plant that is sometimes called lamb’s ears and sometimes bunny ears continues to be fuzzy. i’ll let you know if it for some reason ever ceases to be fuzzy. we brunched at beau monde (YUM) and then she was off. too short a visit, i demand to the ethers that my sister return to philly soon.

i want more tea but am too much in upstairs mode to go boil water. if i weren’t so, i would be drinking serendipitea’s black current tea. i also demand to the ethers a hot water supply upstairs!

speaking of upstairs… the next news is that we are going to have another addition to the household zoo. it was completely unintentional. on our way to someplace in new jersey for guitar amp pieces, we got lost. while lost we passed a small bird store. the week later, we returned to the store and discovered that it is a supply store, a breeder of certain macaws (hyacinths, they are so very beautiful and humongous) and a bird rescue center. we saw many birds that were unloved, unsocialized, feather picking, unhappy critters. they all have a safe and loving home now and many are making progress. then we met fred. fred is a charming senegal who was unwanted. he (we’re not sure of the he part, but since someone made the mistake of calling this bird fred, we think of it as he) was had two previous owners. the first recognized the lack of care he was giving to his bird and put out an ad in the papers. the woman who bought the bird received one little nip, became scared and never took him out of the cage again. as a result of the neglect, fred is scared and self-imposing a cage bound status. he seemed to like both of us, and after a few visits actually came out of his cage to say hello. everyone was so surprised and pleased, and by the end of that day we had adopted him. we bring him to our zoo on monday. we don’t know what there was to be afraid of–he is as sweet and calm as any bird we’ve met so far. far more calm than our little adolescent–and since fred is three, his basic personality is formed. the only surprise will be how much he opens up once he’s lived with us for a while. we can’t wait!

so, now the zoo is: one very loving, very playful, very adolescent jardine’s parrot (most common name of the day: riley), two mismatched love birds, one crazy swimming red eared slider turtle who is growing bigger by the day, one almost 14 year-old-lady eastern painted turtle, one pueblan milk snake, a tank full of fish (two of whom are murderers, but i’ll tell you about them later) and now fred. welcome fred.  

birds are opposite from humans

when humans are stressed (even if they don’t know it) teeth grinding is common during the night.

bird (most frequent name today: puff) on the other hand, when she is most content, and usually when falling asleep, grinds her beak. 

i find the sound background-ish. the very edgy man sitting next to me finds it nails on chalkboard, and the silly idea that our very human-like bird is in this way opposite to humans does not make things better.

grind grind grind, opposites are funny.

a new tail feather

our medium green bird (whose names are, at any given moment: beakley, riley, cricket, puff, birdling, and of course the official name we never use, sidra) has grown a new tail feather! all eight of her originals were broken in rough play. no we are not bird-beaters. she just falls down a lot when it’s manic-chew time, which it is often while she’s in her teenage phase. teenager! crazy crazy teenager. you haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a bird mood swing. humph–i simply will not chew on your fingers right now, you are not interesting to me at all. but i love you! i’m crazy! turn off my hormones pleeeeeeeeeease!