Recently, I unearthed some “baby” pictures.
This is Cloud when he was 3 weeks old. Isn’t he cute!?!
This is Joy at six weeks on the day we brought her home. Now that’s cute!
Cloud at 8 weeks with a two-month old Abigail. Notice the bat ears.
Another shot of Cloud the Cool Cat at 8 weeks. Hard to believe he was ever that thin!
Today’s post…………..the definitely dashing, dazzling and smashing Mr. Darcy, who has graciously posed for the following photographs (captioned by his beloved nanny, Kathy)…
Does this position make me look…stout?
A true gentleman takes pride in his personal appearance, achieved by meticulous grooming
………………….and more grooming,
Don’t you agree?
Unfortunately, one is at times obliged to mingle with the lower classes.
What’s under there?
Ahhhhhh………..a tail!
Permit me to assist you, my clumsy friend; a bird’s tail is a gentleman’s cravat.
I was only trying to help!
You certainly don’t take criticism kindly, do you?
This is Cloud, the cool cat.
He’s very laid back and relaxed. I’ve known people who have owned cats for years, and I truly believe that mine is by far the best tempered, especially after I hear stories of bites, scratches and general unpredictableness. Cloud loves to take life easy. Despite the fact that he’s an excellent mouser (every rodent from shrew to rabbit avoids our yard like the plague), he’s exceedingly plump. Sometimes, I wonder how he is even able to hunt the full grown rats and rabbits I find half-eaten in the garage from time to time. During most of the day, Cloud wanders from place to place in the yard, searching out the warmest spots for his schedule of siestas. 6:00 am, his cat bed. 8:30 am, the towel basket by the freezer. 10:00 am, the grill. 12:00 pm, the flowerbed under the magnolia. 3:00 pm, the back stoop. By 5:00 pm, he’s already stalking birds.
This is Cloud’s answer to stress; just find a warm corner to curl up and relax.
I can imagine what went through your mind as you got on this blog; that agonizing few seconds between the click of the mouse and the arrival of this page on your computer screen. Has she posted again? What exciting new information might I learn today? Surely Karen has the most amazing, awe-inspiring and absolutely…………..you get my drift.
In other words-WOW.
By now you have probably realized the all-important fact: I’m not Karen.
I’m Kathy, Karen’s ever-present critic, shopping partner, advisor, supporter, comic relief, best friend, worst enemy, etc. otherwise known as her sister. You might also know me as the proud and happy parent of Tango and Darcy, two frequent guests on this site. Why my presence here? It is threefold: to introduce a new talent to the world of whistling, to join the ever-increasing numbers of people who rave about their pets as though they were children, and last, to make a confession.
I took my sister’s camera.
Let me put things in perspective here. I have a cockatiel. Karen has a cockatiel. I do not have a camera. Karen has a camera. I have very few pictures of Tango. Karen could start an avalanche using only the pictures she has taken of Tara.
Last night, I was about to give Tango a shower when I noticed that he was whistling a great deal more than usual. In fact, I have never heard him whistle so much in his entire life, even in his failed attempts to court Tara (my little baby’s all grown up!). Why? In my hurry to get my baby sister’s toy rubber monkeys out of the tub, I had placed his suction perch on the mirror, not particularly thinking about how he might react to seeing himself there. Or that he might draw the conclusion that he had just found a new friend. What followed is fairly easy to deduce.
It wasn’t until the following day that my crime was discovered while Karen was browsing through her camera memory. Upon finding the evidence, she insisted not only that it was perfect material for her blog, but since I had taken the movie, I had to write a worthy introduction to it.
So here, without any further ado, is Tango the cockatiel, age eleven months, whistling his very own arrangement of “Shave and a Haircut” and “Fere Jacques” in several different keys simultaneously.
This is Percy, or Sir Percival Blakeney, the amazing Quaker parrot. He has been a resident of the Spangler household since August, 2006 when he was given to us by a family who could no longer care for him. Like all Quaker parrots, he is loaded with personality, a little too much personality. He screams, courts his bell toy, prefers sweets to vegetables, bites and likes to blow kisses to any person playing a musical instrument within ear shot. I’ve had this bird in my room for most of the spring, summer and fall, but recently we moved him back downstairs for a change of scenery. After a few weeks of annoying everyone in the living room, we moved Percy to my brother’s room.
To our absolute shock, Percy hit it off great with Matthew, well, as great as it ever can be with a little feathered dragon.
He loves popcorn. One thing we noticed is that he tends to respond to deeper male voices which my Dad and now my brother have. He won’t have anything to do with Kathy or I anymore and tries to bite us through the bars of his cage. We were quite perplexed over this strange chain of events. Then, just a few days ago, Mom came to Kathy and I with a worried expression and told us that in their experience, it was the female Quaker parrots that tended to respond to deeper voices. This made Kathy and I look at each other in dismay. Not again…
The other day, I was busily practicing the piano when I heard loud barking outside. I rushed to the window only to find Joy at the base of Emily’s Chinese Pistachio.
She was clearly agitated, leaping several feet off the ground and barking her warning bark.
She even attempted to climb the tree. I didn’t know dogs ever tried to climb trees.
What could have had her so upset?
These little Texan monkeys were the culprits.
Poor Joy. She wanted to eat them so badly!
Yesterday, I walked into Kathy’s room for some hangers and found both bird cages open. To my surprise, Tango, who normally dislikes getting near his smaller cousin, had actually ventured into Darcy’s cage and was eating his birdseed!
What a greedy cockatiel!
But then, Darcy didn’t seem to mind a bit!
My sister is also a very good poet, and she recently wrote this sonnet that I think sums up her avian pets quite well.
A stout little man in a blue frock coat,
Chirping and tweeting the morning away;
The birth of speech welling up in his throat –
So happy and loving from day to day.
A lean, gangly youngster, yellow and white,
Trying to impress by singing off-key,
Knocking over everything in sight
Continually, no dancer is he.
Darcy is my first, my little boy blue –
With respect we use the prefix “Mister,”
My second is Tango – may the klutz rue
Destroying my bedroom like a twister!
Yet all the same, through frus’tration and joy,
I love both dearly, for they are my boys.
Kathy Lynelle Spangler January 4th, 2009
We like pets in my family. Ever since I can remember, we’ve always had some animal or another, dogs, fish, cats, hermit crabs, hamsters, you name it. We also like to meet pets in other families. For example…
Meet Jake the Coonhound, owned by the Cain family.
I think he looks like Old Dan from Where the Red Fern Grows. He was very, very sweet and the kids are still talking about him.
Over the past week and a half, we’ve been petsitting for some friends that were visiting out of state. Meet Cassie, the Mini Australian Shepherd.
All the kids just loooooove her.
Cassie seems to prefer Kathy over everyone else.
She’s a very playful puppy (she not a year old yet). Here are some shots of her playing fetch with Kimmy.
Can I eat him, pleeeeeease?
How big of a cage does this bird need?
Whoa… breakfast!
Scratch my tummy, please.
We’ve also been taking care of Daisy, a lovely eight-month old cockatiel. Interestingly enough, she was also raised at the Kookaburra Bird Shop. We have strong suspicions that she’s Tango sister, as I remember a bird just like her in Tango’s clutch when Kathy picked him out.
Here’s Daisy and Tango for comparison.
Daisy is the best-tempered cockatiel I’ve ever met. She was perfectly amiable around the children (something Taralee has a hard time doing) and kept putting her head down to be scratched.
Unfortunately, Taralee got a little jealous with all the attention Daisy was getting.
See, I’m still cute!
Look at me!
Actually, once they got used to each other, both birds ignored each other for the most part.
Darcy, Kathy’s English Budgie, has just finished his adult molt (I guess that means he’s grown up…sigh…). The other day, I was surprised and delighted to hear him “talking” very softly. In about a month, I expect him to turn into a little chatterbox.
Tango is more ridiculous that ever. He’s really whistling now and we’re working on teaching him new songs.
Tango and Darcy do get along, unless they’re on top of their cages. On the bird tree, though, they seem to be quite friendly.
Life here is good for pets!
