Sunday morning breakfast wars

I was busy cleaning Shugg's cage this morning when Cathy Jean came over to help.

But that turned out not to be her intention at all. She wanted breakfast. Immediately. She gave me an extra long "Stop what you're doing and get me my breakfast now" look.

"Extra corn on my plate.....................please."

And then Michael Ray showed up from behind.

He wanted his breakfast faster than Cathy Jean's "now."

Thus, the "look."

Message delivered. The turtles split up and ran off in different directions (probably to see who would get served first).

Shugg could care less about what was going on in TurtleWorld. He had just had a bath (starlings adore baths of any kind), he had a clean cage and he was about to get served his breakfast before the turtles got theirs.

Shugg is the smartest, most fearless of birds. And there is nothing better on a Sunday morning than to have everything all clean and fresh and then have breakfast outdoors.

If you were wondering where Violet was in all this morning drama, Violet couldn't be a helper because she was stuck indoors because of an operation she had earlier in the week to remove a small tumor. I am 100% confident that she will be perfectly fine as soon as she heals but in the meantime, it's a sad thing to have to watch a cat maneuver around with a lampshade on her head.

But things aren't toooooo bad if you look at it from the other animals' points of view. It was close to noon and she had already had two breakfasts. And when the turtles were finally served their breakfast, Violet was already enjoying an early lunch.

An Introduction to Babe and Shugg

Babe and Shugg came to live with me temporarily some time ago because Sarah was having a baby and building a house at the same time. I told Sarah I'd watch her birds for as long as it took for her life to settle down (ha! like that will ever happen). Well, it's now time for Babe and Shugg to return to Redbud Ranch and I am going to miss them a lot, so much so that I've been stalling on their return. :-) Really, you could not ask for better guests.

Sarah describes Babe as a butter biscuit. That's exactly what he is, just a good, good sweet bird. Perfect in every way except for one thing. Just one thing but it's a good one. There's one sound he makes when he needs some immediate face to face time. It's the exact sound of a smoke alarm...the pitch, the volume, and it keeps going for about the length of time you need to find a ladder to turn the damn thing off if he really was a smoke alarm. He duplicates that annoying sound perfectly (apparently the smoke alarm must go off pretty often at Redbud Ranch if he's so good at imitating it-ha ha ha). That is the only thing I won't miss about Babe.

I wake up every weekend morning to the sound of Babe belting out the smoke alarm, (sometimes on weekdays too-ha ha ha). If it takes me thirty minutes to get out of bed, well that's what it takes. While Babe is belting out the smoke alarm, Stella is belting out her security alarm. Approximately one minute of "beep, beep, beep, beep, beep," etc. and then a short rest and then it's time to repeat. I also have Eddie calling out "Judy (her name for me which is not my real name)" with a few "hellos" that come out as questions. It's pretty amazing. I really can sleep through all of that. I have never had a problem falling asleep but I do have a problem waking up, even when I have that many "alarms" going off at nearly the same time.

But when I finally do get up, everything is quiet again until Shugg shares the one sound he has picked up from me. Shugg has noticed that I blow my nose first thing in the morning (I was NOT aware of that) and so as soon as I enter the room where the birds are, I get to hear a lot of nose blowing. Fabulous.

I've been living with perfect imitations of Sarah's household noises for some time now. Shugg's favorite word is an urgent sounding "Terry," the name of Sarah's husband (apparently he hears that a lot). Shugg also imitates Sarah's cell phone. Babe right now is imitating the keypad of Sarah's security alarm. Both birds imitate the sounds of birds that live in the country in Kansas.

I've been living with those sounds for quite a while and now when Babe and Shugg return to Redbud Ranch, Sarah will have to listen to my nose blowing and whatever other sounds they've picked up from around here.......forEVER. Ha ha ha.

I'm still going to miss them though.