translated by A.S. Kline.

The birds love this one. And since I do too, it gets read a lot. Its one of the few poems that I reread to them.

Things

My walking-stick, small change, key-ring,
The docile lock and the belated
Notes my few days left will grant
No time to read, the cards, the table,
A book, in its pages, that pressed
Violet, the leavings of an afternoon
Doubtless unforgettable, forgotten,
The reddened mirror facing to the west
Where burns illusory dawn. Many things,
Files, sills, atlases, wine-glasses, nails,
Which serve us, like unspeaking slaves,
So blind and so mysteriously secret!
They’ll long outlast our oblivion;
And never know that we are gone.

Author: Jorge Luis Borges

I’m hanging out on the back porch, and I have Kiwi/Kermit out here in their cages. A hummingbird came by to check out all the red in Kiwi’s cage. Kiwi let the hummingbird know that the cage (and red toys) were taken, and that it better move its blurry wing flapping butt along right pronto.

Well, it took about four years, but Harley macaw can climb the refrigerator. After he did it once, it now takes him about five seconds to get up there. Its also not going to be allowed. That is a storage place, not a macaw hang out spot.

He also got in a fight with the ceiling fan. Oh, it wasn’t on. I rarely use the two ceiling fans in the living room, because of the birds. I don’t want to get in the habit of running them, and start them up when the birds are out. Or leave them on when I let the birds out.

What do you call a parrot that flies into a ceiling fan?

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Shredded tweet.

Anyway, the fan was off, and he was on top of his cage. He’s been attacking the fan blades lately. I don’t like this, but decided to live with it. They are mostly macaw proof. And, if they get destroyed, I’m pretty sure I can buy replacements. I would like for him to gnaw on tougher stuff. Gnawing on tough stuff is good for a birds beak.

So, he was gnawing on a fan blade, and got pissed. So he slung it away from him. This made another fan blade (behind him) come toward him. He spotted it, and flipped around just in time to grab it before it could hit him. In outrage at this cowardly attack, he slung it away from him. This continued for a few, leaving me quite amused. He finally worked his way to the end of the blades, and managed to “escape” from the attacks. His obvious relief at getting away amused me no end. I’m smiling while writing about it.

Harley’s general checkup vet visit went well. His blood work and fecal came back great.

The vet had taken him into the back for his nail trim and blood draw. Harley was wrapped in a towel when he was brought back in, when the vet sat him down on the counter, Harley dashed across the counter, and hopped into my lap. I was sitting on a bench next to the table.

He was well behaved. He was loud, but that is standard. At least he didn’t bite anyone (which he bite two people on his first vet visit that I carried him to).

Its amazing how one thing leads to another, over the years.

Back when I was a teenager, was a member of the Science Fiction book club. I picked out a book with a nice looking dustjacket. It was a man with a sword, being menaced by two tiger sized siamese cats. This was the first few books of the Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny. If I have to identify the Chronicles of Amber for you, then you aren’t a geek.

I’ve liked Zelazny ever since.

A few months back, I learned that a massive compendium of Zelazny’s work was being published. Four of the six volumes were already out. I bought them, and spent several weeks reading them. I had never known he was a poet. So, while hanging out in my living room one evening, I read one of the poems out loud. The birds instantly took notice. Backs straightened and bird eyes swiveled around and focused on me.

Since then, I’ve made a habit of reading poetry to them. I often skip a day, but I try to read a poem a day to them. They still take note. Mind, I suspect that they would take note if I was reading the phone book. But since poetry sounds different, I could be wrong. The phone book is not interesting reading, so I don’t plan on testing this theory. Besides, I don’t actually have any phone books. The Internet and GPS have killed off any need I have for them.

Anyway, you can’t read poetry aloud for long without developing an interest in it. So I’ve been doing some casual poetry reading, and study, for the past few months.

The road to it is interesting though. A nice illustration on a book jacket catches a boys eye. That leads to a life long love of an author. The middle aged man that the boy grew into (physically anyway), looks into this favored author a bit more, and discovers he was a poet. Against the odds, this ties in with his love of parrots, because the parrots love poetry. (Or love the man reading aloud to them – close to the same, because poetry is meant to be read aloud, and prose is not). And that leads to the man appreciating poetry more. All because of a cheap dust jacket illustration on a cheap copy of a fantasy book. That illustration had an impact over twenty years later.

The world is a richer one than we often think.

So, this morning, I go to feed the birds. I notice Harley macaw is acting “snappy”. Thats when I suspect that he will try biting my fingers through the bars when I go to put food in his bowl. To solve the problem, I normally open his cage door, and reach in to put his food directly into the bowl. Often times I have to push him a bit to the side to get the food into the bowl. He doesn’t bite when I do this, because its not a game.

Anyway, this morning, I reach in there, and he hops up on my arm! What a nice way to start a morning, giving a head scratch to my favorite bird, and snuffling the feathers on top of his head. I love the smell of macaw. It used to bother me back when I first got him. Now it raises fond thoughts.

Normally, Harley rates food over attention from me, so its always nice when that isn’t the case.

So here I am, sitting here in my living room. Kiwi is the only bird out. She is playing on her cage, which is right next to my chair.

Kiwi is playing on the other side of the top of her cage. So, suddenly she walks over to my side, poops on me, then walks back to where she is playing, and goes back to it.

Parrots.

Well the massive work project is winding down. We went live tuesday – with a partial group of folks at work. Weds everyone was there. So, this means I’ve actually got some time to let the birds out this weekend. For the past 4-5 weeks they have been seriously shorted on their out time.

And it means I’ve got three super sticky cockleburs. Not to mention that it looks like Harley has totally “forgotten” what he is not allowed to mess with. (In all fairness, he never does have a solid grasp of this – or at least, he sure doesn’t act like it.) So when he isn’t on me, I have to go get him every 3 minutes or so to get him away from whatever he is messing with.

At least I’ve managed to get Kermit to playing on the tree stand. And Kiwi is playing with Kermits toys in Kermits cage.

For the next five minutes, anyway.

I swear, Macaws are living embodiments of destructive chaos.

I love those bird days when all of the birds have been out long enough that they all get tired and go back into their cages for a nap.

This doesn’t happen as often as I would like.

Another way of dealing with parrots – swap it up. Sometimes with Harley macaw (and with Kiwi amazon) they will try to bite me through the bars when I’m putting food in their bowls. Yeah, to be so bright, they can be that dumb….

Anyway, they have both caught me a time or two, and they aren’t kidding about the bite. It normally brings a bit of blood if it lands.

The easiest way to deal with it – I open their cage doors, and reach in and drop the food in their bowls. With them right there, and inches from my hand, with nothing in between my hand and them. They don’t try to bite.

Its a game when its through the bars. Its not when I’m not.

First – Kermit has a new bell. You would think she would get tired of ringing it. She hasn’t yet. And its been DAYS. She might lose her new bell.

Now, Harley macaw, like most macaws, is an astute observer of humans. He doesn’t really grasp what he observes, for the most part, but he can, on occasion, be quite cunning.

Yesterday I was doing a lot of cleaning. And, I had left him in his cage, and was more or less ignoring him. I often have him out when cleaning, but not always. Sometimes I just want to clean, as opposed to sweeping with a broom that has a macaw attached, with his wings flapping. Which kind of makes the broom useless for sweeping, you know?

Harley was “sneezing”. It wasn’t really a sneeze, but was a loud snort like noise, where he was clearing his nostrils. But it was unusual, and it was concerning to me. So each time he would sneeze, I would look at him intently. It took me a while, but I eventually noticed that each time I would look at him after the sneeze, that he would be studying me, as intently as I was studying him. So, I conducted an experiment.

I opened the porch door, and moved outside. I settled down to do some reading, in a chair not visible from his cage. But it wasn’t more than 6 feet or so away from his cage. And…… no sneezes. After a while, I went back in to finish the cleaning. And the sneezes started back. (And no, they were not related to the cleaning).

So, the featherball was sneezing to get some attention from me!

Macaws, you gotta watch em!