Days with the Dorans

  The Goose has always been our animal whisperer but when we rescued our two birds from abuse, I had no expectation that they'd ever come to us. I just wanted to provide a safe space for them to live our their days. We leave the doors to their cage open but they rarely leave. Imagine my surprise when I saw THIS!

 So I got home from my run and was going to clean the bird cage when I noticed something didn't look quite right... Mimic was actually hanging out on the outside of the cage!! I have noticed before that sometimes the door of his cage was slightly ajar and now it makes sense. I wonder how often he does this. Later I actually watched as he flew toward that side of the cage and opened it and sure enough-soon after he was hanging on the outside of the cage. I kind of love that he can get out and stretch his wings a bit! HERE is a video of when I first noticed it!

 So the Bigs are big enough to stay home alone and they weren't getting up early to cheer on their youngest brother. While we were celebrating another win with donuts back at home the house almost burned down... Well- not BURNED down but definitely smoked out! We pulled up to the kids outside. I guess Z put in a hot pocket for 20 minutes instead of two! OH MY GOSH!!! Our entire house stunk! My first reaction was to save the animals! Thank goodness it was a nice day. Sigh. I think he won't be doing that again...

We have had the CRAZIEST winter. Too cold, Too windy. Too snowy. Jeff's school (in particular) was closed so much it felt like there was a stretch where he never worked a full week. The worst was when strong winds knocked out our power. I wasn't so worried about us (we could layer up but I was REALLY worried about our animals. The reptiles need their heat lamps and the birds are in the coldest room of the house. I sent Jeff to the store to get a generator but when he came back the power was on. We agreed to leave it in the car in hopes we could return it. Well the power went out again in the middle of the night and so we got up and unboxed the generator. After we put the oil in and put the parts together we saw a warning not to put it too close to the house CO poisoning and don't put it in snow or rain because it can cause fire!! (There was snow EVERYWHERE!!!) With the threat of CO poisoning and/or fire, we decided dead animals (although awful) were bett...

It's official! The birds have now moved into Blue's cage and I'm so happy! I got them a new little feeder which is AMAZING because it feeds them and the empty shells are collected so it's a huge saver (time and money)! The only step now is to get them more comfortable with me. I still stick my hand in with them and talk to them each night but so far they aren't trusting me. We'll get there though- if there's one person who has patience, it's this girl!!

I've been working hard on talking with the birds each day in hopes they'll get on my finger or at least get to Blue's old cage. Well, I don't know how it happened but while I had the door open, Mimic flew right out and into the kitchen door-wall. It was so scary and he seemed so afraid. He flew into our front living room and Marty found him. He was sitting there and Marty was so good letting me know he was there but not getting too close to scare him. I went to get him to "step up" (dumb Laura~ he doesn't even know that term yet) and he flew off to the dining room. I realized the only way I was going to get him back to his cage safely was to hold him, which I did. His poor little heart was beating like mad but I got him back to his cage. I've been working with them still every day but I realized the only way to get them into Blue's cage (or the way I thought was best) was to have them discover it on their own so I opened the door to both c...

Well, I am a bit shocked to be writing this post as I wasn't sure it would happen. I hadn't put away Blue's cage and was thinking about perhaps getting some birds (not parrots) again.. maybe in the summer... Then a friend texted me a while ago that a friend of a friend needed to get rid of her parakeets and would I be interested. I talked to Jeff who was actually a bit excited about it and said sure. I didn't hear back from the bird owner so wasn't sure if she still wanted to get rid or them. We went on spring break and I kind of forgot about it a bit. So on Sunday when I got off the treadmill (ugh- running on the beach was soooo much nicer), I had a text from the owner of the birds. Long story short~ Ali Jane, Z and I got in the car and headed to their house to meet the birds that afternoon and take them home. MEET MIMIC AND FREDO I learned that they are one year old and the main reason they were getting rid of them was that their cats didn't like th...