Merry Birdmas!

Well, I totally missed updating you guys on Thanksgiving. Suffice it to say, I gained a few grams from all the apple juice, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and eggnog. (Mom allows me to have a little every now and then, even if us birds ARE lactose intolerant. It makes my poop a little loose, but other than that, it's no biggie. And it tastes soooooo good!)

We put up our Birdmas tree a couple days ago. It was so much fun! As you can see, Mom let me help her with some of the ornaments.

 My grandma asked if I was going to write a letter to Santa Bird. I didn't know I could do that! But after she told me, I started thinking about it and I had Mom write it down for me. Here's what I've got so far:

Dear Santa Bird,
 
How have you been? I hope you're not molting too bad this winter. Why do we birds always molt right in the middle of the coldest weather??? I have been a very good girl this year. I hope you will leave some presents for me in the red, furry stocking next to my princess palace. I would really like some more musical toys to bang my beak on, and some more rubber duckies that squeak (I bit holes in my old ones' beaks, so they don't make squeaky noises anymore), and some strawberries.... but only if you can ones that taste sweet, because Mom says they're out of season now.
 
Love,
 
Phoebe
 
 
P.S. Could you ask Mom to let me have the teeny tiny Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ornaments to chew on, please? They're so colorful, and they feel so interesting when I touch them with my tongue.
 
 Not too shabby for a first attempt, huh?

I overheard Mom telling grandma about presents and cards. Cards is easy. I just need to confetti-ize my signature on some pretty paper and give it to Mom. But presents is a hard one. I'm a bird. I don't have money. What can I give to Mom and Raja? Not much time left for me to figure it out, either. Well, birdies? Do you have any suggestions that could help me out?

I guess that's all for now. Until next time, PTH fans!

Movin' Right Along, guggah-dun guggah-dun, Footloose and Fancy- Free!

Getting there is half the fun. Come share it with me!

 

 

What a fun song, huh? Mom showed it to me on You Tube. And it's so appropriate. Why....?

Because it's MOVING DAY!!!!

Mom took all the stuff out of my cage this morning, and then she took it apart and threw it in the Dumpster outside. She says I'm getting a pretty, new, white one that is a lot nicer than my old one. In fact, she calls it my Princess Palace. Sounds like it'll be awesome! She says the new room is pretty and cheerful and pale yellow, with lots of sunlight and a nice big window that gets just the right amount of sunshine every day, with a pretty view of trees and grass and a quiet road and then some more trees.

I'm kind of nervous. She says it's a long drive to get there, and I get kinda car sick. I hate being sick. Regurgitating to show Mom I love her is one thing, but doing it because I feel all woozy is something else. Mom made some ginger tea for me, with lots of honey, to help me not be sick. I hope it works. Bright side is, I like warm herbal tea and I love-love-lovvvvvve honey. So, even if it doesn't work, at least I got some yummy tea and honey out of it. That's something, right?

Raja (my brother, the cat) says Mom once took him on a reeeeeaaaallllly long trip that took a few days. He said it was awful. He had to stay in a carrier while she drove him and an old roommate of mine all the way to Massachusetts from Colorado. He got car sick, too, but she didn't have any ginger tea for him (and he wouldn't have drunk it anyway). Mom promises that this trip won't take as long as that. Just a couple hours, not days.

All I can say is, I'll survive. I mean, I had to fly -- in a PLANE! -- to get from Florida all the way to Massachusetts before she met me and adopted me, so I think I can handle this drive to New Hampshire. I don't like car rides, but I'll be okay.

My travel cage is all set to go. It's got my other Happy Hut in it, so I can snuggle in there. And Raja's carrier is there, too, with his fuzzy blue blankie. (He's such a big baby! Who ever heard of a 12-year-old cat with a security blanket? I might have to start calling him Linus.)

Here comes Mom now to put Raja and me inside our travel accommodations. She says the car's all heated up and it's time to go. Not much time for my own expert tips, but here's a great article from some other bird experts: No-Hassle Pet Bird Travel Tips   (They might be human, but they know their stuff, so we can overlook that.)

Until next time, PTH fans!

Trick or Treat from a Bird's Perspective

Just look at it.... sitting there with that sinister, toothy grin and its alarming orange color. Brrrrr! I HATE these things.

Mom smiled at me when she came in earlier, saying she had a Halloween treat for me. I know the word "treat." It means yummy, good things to eat. And then she presented me with an orange thing that looked just like THIS one. Why in the name of all that is fun and feathery would she think I would LIKE this scary thing?

And to make matters worse,  I can see that she DID put all kinds of yummy, good things to eat inside the one she gave me. But there's no WAY I'm going to get close enough to that orange thing to get them. It might eat me!

Well, that's for me to worry about, I guess. In the meantime, there is another, more important reason for this entry. It has to do with this special day humans call "Halloween." Specifically, Halloween Decorations and Halloween Treats.

Dangers of Halloween Decorations

Mom showed me pictures online of all kinds of scary things (you call these spooky things"decorations"?) placed all around people's houses, inside and outside. It makes me worry about any birds that might be living in those homes. We birds want people to think we're pretty tough, but we get scared easily by a lot of stuff that humans aren't afraid of. Please be aware that while we act fearless around a lot of things bigger than us (like you humans, Mr. Xyla-Gator, or even the cat), sometimes we see your decorations A LOT differently than you do, and it can frighten us terribly. Even things like a stuffed teddy bear. (Mom had one of those once. It kept looking at me with those menacing eyes. I just KNEW it was going to reach out and grab me with those big furry paws. Mom realized pretty quick that I thought it was scary, so she put it somewhere else, and I haven't seen it again.)

Windows & Mirrors - While I'm at it, be aware that windows (both open AND closed) and mirrors can pose a danger to us. When we're panicking, we just fly toward what looks like an escape route. An open window means we could fly right through it and end up disoriented and lost. A closed window and a mirror can both pose the danger of us thinking that they are an unobstructed way out. And if we're flying too fast (which we're likely to do if we're scared), we could smack right into it and break our necks.

Open Containers of Liquid - A bubbling cauldron or a glass of fake blood might seem cool to you humans, but there are two potential dangers: Drowning and Poisoning. We like to perch on things and we're curious about a lot of stuff. And we like to play. These can all add up to at the very least, a bird wet with something other than water. At worst, it can end up with us drowning because we can't get out of a container that is too deep, or getting deathly sick because the color or texture or smell appealed to us and we decided to try to drink some of it.

Candles & Electric Decorations - Feathers and flames do NOT go together, unless you're a phoenix. Since the vast majority of birds are not phoenixes, it bears repeating: Feathers and flames do NOT go together. Please do not let us out of our cages at all if you have any kind of open flame lit, be it a candle, a cigarette (and don't smoke around us, either! That's bad for a whole other reason!) or even the burner on your stove. If you have decorations that plug in, please do not let us near the cords. If we don't fear it thinking it's a snake (I had a cockatiel roommate once who was terrified of electric cord snakes), then we're likely to think the cord is a big piece of string to play with and chomp on, which can hurt or kill us. I know you humans like fried foods, but fried parrot should NEVER be on the menu.

Dangers of Halloween Treats

Sugary Treats - These CAN be okay.... sometimes. Sparingly, and on rare occasions. But for the most part, find healthier treats for us birds to eat.

Full Disclosure: Mom knows I love jelly beans. I even have my own jar of them. She picks out all the flavors she knows I can't have (chocolate, coffee, mocha and cappuccino, in particular, and black licorice, but that's because she just doesn't like that flavor herself), but the rest she keeps in a big jar. When she thinks I've been really good, she'll open up the jar and let me pick one. The best part is sorting through all the colors and choosing the one I feel like having at that moment. True, the food coloring and the sugar aren't really that great for me, but ONE jelly bean, every once in a great while isn't going to hurt. (Besides, I only gnaw off the candy coating and drop the jelly part to the bottom of the cage. I hate being sticky.) I like Skittles, too, but I'm not crazy about yogurt covered raisins. Mostly, I'm a fresh fruit kind of girl. (Welllll, okay. I love pumpkin pie, too. Pie's a fruit, right? And oh, whipped cream!!!!!)

Chocolate - NEVER!!!! Chocolate is deadly to us birds. Caffeine (which is in chocolate) is also deadly to us birds. Never give chocolate to us (not even white chocolate... just in case). Never give any foods that have TOUCHED chocolate to us. (If you can see brown at all, there's chocolate, and we can't have it.)

Holy walnuts! That was a long blog entry.  I guess I'll go back to figuring out how to get my treats out of that creepy orange thing now. (And then I think I may poop on Mom's shirt to punish her.)

Until next time, PTH fans! Here's wishing you a Happy and Bird-Safe Halloween!

Birdie Butt Balm

Wouldn't you love it if you could just have one product that conditions your hair, acts as lip balm and signature perfume, with anti-louse properties, too? And what if you never had to buy it? And what if you could take it with you, wherever you went, without ever worrying about dropping it or losing it or running out of it?

That's were we birds are super-lucky, because we DO have our own free, un-lose-able conditioner / lip balm / perfume/ louse deterrent. I call it a "Birdie Butt Balm" gland!

Well, okay, Mom says it's actually called a Uropygial Gland. (I have NO idea what it has to do with Europe. I was hatched in Florida -- I've never even BEEN to Europe!)  It's also called a Preen Gland, which makes more sense to me, because that's what we use it for most often (but I still think Birdie Butt Balm gland is more fun to say).

This isn't me. Mom hasn't been able to get a picture of me preening yet. (It's kinda private, ya know?)

It's that little nub (it reminds Mom of a skin flap or hanging wart) on the top of our butt. Most of us birds have it. Whenever we want to preen our feathers, we first grab some of the stuff from that gland and then spread lightly throughout our feathers to make them soft and keep them in tip-top condition. It's also a dynamite Chapstick for us birds. I like to spread it all over my tongue because it gets so dry in our house in cooler months. (Because hello... bird. No lips here. Just a tongue and a beak. And beaks don't get chapped. But tongues can. We birds don't have much in the way of saliva for moisture.)

It also has a nice, subtle perfume to make the boy birds go crazy for us, and it helps us keep feather lice from ruining our beautiful looks.

One other factoid: In some bird species, like ducks, preening with Birdie Butt Balm is what makes their feathers waterproof. Lucky duckies!

Yup, we birds are really lucky to have such a useful thing attached to us. But if you're curious about examining it for yourself, you'd better look up more about it online, and leave your bird's butt alone. It's OUR gland, it doesn't make much and we need all of it to keep our feathers looking their best and most functional. So it's not that we don't love you, but we're NOT sharing any of our Birdie Butt Balm goodness with you. Don't touch, or we'll probably bite you. :-)

Until next time, PTH fans!

The Poop Tells The Scoop . . .

A nice, big, normal first poop of the morning.  Ewwww!

Last year, I got really sick. So sick, I had to have X-rays. Mom said my doctor told her I had an enlarged spleen, because of a bad infection, so I had to take some pretty yucky medicine twice a day for a lonnnnng time to get better. But ever since then, Mom and I have gotten into a weird daily habit. When I wake up, Mom puts a piece of newspaper on top of my cage, underneath my play gym perch. So, I go up there and,... er... go... up there. (Not that I mind. It sure keeps the bottom of my cage a lot cleaner.) And then Mom LOOKS at it and tells me if she thinks it's a good poop or not.

See, I'm a bird, and we know that other birds will pick on us if we show that we don't feel well. So we hide it from everyone. There's no use trying to reason with us, either. It's instinct. Mom hates that I'm like that, but I can't change. It's just what my instincts tell me to do. So, she gets around it by looking at my poop after I go. If it looks good, it means I probably feel good. If it doesn't look good, it could mean I drank too much water or took a bath or ate some fruit that was starting to turn, or I could be sick.

The next thing Mom does is sit me on my scale to see what I weigh. I'm usually 78-80 grams:

 



I'm a little light on the scale here, and that made Mom watch me really closely for a few days to see if there were any other symptoms of illness. There was nothing to worry about, this time. I had woken up at 4:12 the morning before, and Mom didn't get home on time, either, so I just went to bed before I had eaten enough food for the day.

It made Mom worry enough about me to give me some peanut butter and honey cream of wheat. Hmmmm. Maybe I should eat less all the time, so she gives me some more of it? I love that stuff! It tastes so GOOD.

Mom got a food scale for me after she saw the one the doctor used to weigh me. She wants me to make sure you know not to get this particular scale, though, because it she says she only paid $20 and she got what she paid for, which wasn't much. (I agree. The metal platform I'm standing on comes unstuck from the sticky tape strips that are supposed to hold it onto the base. Mom has to stick it back on every time we go to use it.) I'm just glad I don't have to go in the critter cage anymore.  I hate that tiny, clear box I used to have to go in. Once I realized that Mom just wanted me to step on the scale, I did it. Problem, Phoebe-solved!

The expert tips today are:

1. Look at our poop every time you get a chance, because we won't show you when we're not feeling well, until we're too sick to hide it anymore. It might be gross to scope out our droppings, but you should do it anyway, because it could save our lives.

2. Get a food scale (a better one than this one.... Mom likes the Weight Watcher food scale best) and use it to weigh us. Know what we should weigh for our species, and weigh us pretty regularly, to know what is normal for us as individuals. Mom calls me her Chunky Monkey, because SOME wannabe runway model green cheek conures only weigh 60 or 70 grams, and I usually weigh close to the top of my weight range. (I can't help it. She always gives me such good food!)

Also, while it can be as bad for us birds to be overweight as it is for humans, it's okay to be at the top of the normal weight range, because then, if we DO get sick, there's more time for a doctor to help us get better. If we're at the bottom of the range, there's less time, because we birds can lose a lot of weight, really FAST, when we don't feel well.

Until next time, PTH fans!



 

Does this scale make my butt look fat?





Rock-a-bye birrrrdie!

Boy, what a great weekend! The weather was awesome, and the trees outside my window are turning such beautiful colors. Mom's order of my Zupreme pellets and Lafeber's Nutriberries was delivered yesterday. She says there's enough to feed me for almost half year. She hasn't opened either one yet, but I hope she let's me help her put them into smaller bags.... I love chewing on zip-closure bags! If those plastic bags came in other flavors, they'd be, like, birdie chewing gum! (Mom always holds onto them when I play with them, to make sure I don't eat any plastic bits or get in any other trouble with them.)

Tonight was pretty great. I helped Mom make sourdough biscuits. I don't think she could manage without me there to supervise. And they tasted sooooo good when they were done, too. All crunchy, flaky, buttery goodness!

Last night, we watched "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." We watch it together every year.  We also watched the Garfield Halloween cartoon. I can't decide which Halloween special I like more. The music is so much fun to dance to!

But then, the unthinkable happened: Mom said it was past my bedtime! Nooo!!! What's a conure to do? I was having too much fun to go to bed. Mom hardly ever lets me stay up so late. She got a little upset that I didn't want to go into my Happy Hut so soon to go to sleep. I know she loves me and wants me to stay healthy, and I do LIKE sleep, but not right THEN. It took a few minutes, but she finally decided to read me my favorite bedtime story, "Care Bears: Wish Upon A Star", to help me get sleepy. I love the way Mom's voice sounds when she reads it, and the raised, sparkly stars on the pages are so pretty! I keep trying to pick up those stars, but they're stuck to the hard cardboard pages. One of these days, I'll figure out how to pick up one of those stars. After she read the book, she gave me kisses and snuggles (my favorite!) and let me drink some water before helping me into my Happy Hut. And by then, I was ready to sleep. Getting up a the crack of dawn every day is hard work!

So now that I'm well-rested, bright-tailed (it's red, and definitely bright) and feathery-eyed, it's time for a Birdie Expert Tip: We birds need LOTS of sleep. Make sure we get plenty of undisturbed shut-eye each night, and make sure you keep our schedule pretty regular, because if we don't get enough quality Z's, we get cranky... and cranky birds are nippy birds. Especially us conures. And keeping us on a regular wake-sleep cycle keeps us from getting hormonal, too. Mom sent out a test to a lab to figure out I'm a girl (Duh! Is it really so hard to tell?), so we wake up and go to sleep about the same time every day so my girl birdie hormones don't go to work overtime. I don't want to try to make her a grandma by laying an egg. (Not that I COULD make her a grandma by laying an egg when there aren't any boy birds around, but egg-laying is exhausting and not always very safe. Better to just not risk it at all.)

Anyway, now that you know what helps me go to sleep, do any of you other parrots have anything that helps you to go to sleep? Or, parronts, do any of you have any nightly rituals that help your feathered kids ("fids") feel sleepy? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time PTH fans!

Come roost with me in the tree house!

Hello to all of my fine feathered friends and their awesome "parronts"!

My name is Phoebe. Phoebe Cate Frampton is my full name. (Mom says I only have a middle name so I know when I'm REALLY in trouble.)  I am a six-year old cinnamon green cheek conure.

The Internet is a great place for people of all walks of life, human and parrot, to have fun, hang out, and learn stuff. Mom uses the Internet all the time, and you know what? It looked NEAT! So, I begged her to let me have my own blog. She said I could have one, as long as I made it somewhat useful. So, now she's helping me make my very own blog. Cool, huh?

People -- even non-human people -- should write about what they know, right? Well, I'm totally an expert on being a bird, so I can write about that and maybe help some of my fellow birds and their people.

But before we get started making some real Quintessential Parrot Blog Entries here on Phoebe's Tree House, here's a little more about me: I'm 6 years old, my hatchday is February 27th, and I'm a Pisces. My hobbies include playing with my cell phone, jamming on Mr. Xylo-Gator (my alligator xylophone) while Mom practices with her violin, eating fresh fruit, and dancing to Lady Gaga, Brittany Spears and The Andrews Sisters. One of my favorite things to do is to play with my own rubber duckies while watching and listening to Ernie singing about them.

Mom and my stepbrother (a cat) and I get up really early in the morning, but we always start the day the same way: With COFFEE!!!

 

I love morning coffee with Mom! I love the way the Keurig coffee machine feels under my toes when it vibrates, and I love the loud rumbles and grumbles it makes and the way the brown liquid squirts into the mug and the way the blue lights flash on the buttons. And I love gulping down the luscious mango flavor when it's over..

 

Yes. I said Mango.

 

Mom makes the real coffee for herself. I have no idea what it tastes like, because Mom won't let me have any. All she ever says is, "You can't have caffeine.: You're too avian!" and  "Drinking caffeine would kill you." And then she takes a bottle of mango juice from the fridge and pours it into my coffee mug (a blue seed cup), heats it for 15 seconds in the microwave and gives me my nice, no-longer-freezing-cold mango "coffee" to drink. And it's delicious! I don't know why she doesn't drink this stuff, too. Oh, well. More for me! (Besides.... Who needs caffeine, anyway, when you've got the super-fast metabolism that we birds have, anyway?)

 

Phoebe's Expert Advice: DON'T GIVE ANY CAFFEINE TO US BIRDS, because it's poisonous to us. (But tasty juices are good. Just make sure you read the label to make sure there are no surprise ingredients that are also poisonous to us, like chocolate, garlic, onion or avocado.) Oh, and keep an eye on us when we're playing WITH, or ON things bigger than us. Mr. Xylo-Gator has some powerful jaws that do move on this people toy. So Mom is always careful about making sure they don't snap on me. And as fun as the Keurig is, getting my toes or feathers caught anywhere, or sliding down into scalding hot coffee, would hurt a lot, so Mom keeps a very close eye on me.

 

Gotta go now. Mom says it's past my bedtime. Until next time, PTH fans!