Archive for the ‘Animals’ Category

Bird toys are damned expensive. Totally cool, but made to be destroyed, and so there’s this sort of double edged sword to putting a new toy in their cages. Like, “Ooh, great! They love that one, they…oh, geez. Dead already.”

vs. “Ooh, dammit. Did I just spend that money for nothing? Totally not interested in it…but at least it’ll last awhile, I suppose…”

Except for one thing – the bamboo!

It was one of the first things to go in when we first started the garden, not realizing that the stuff is indestructible and will do its best to overrun everything it can. I don’t have a picture from when it was planted, but at only about 3 feet tall and in a 1 gallon container it looked innocent enough.

It’s now almost as tall as the house and has to constantly be whacked back, because it’s impervious- bugs don’t eat it, the cold doesn’t touch it, and after it rains you can practically sit back and watch it grow with the naked eye:

I don’t know if you can get an idea of the depth here, but there’s a ton of the stuff.

Luckily the parrots have decided they love it- I’ll cut a couple of canes and criss-cross them through the bars. The boys’ll go to their work, stripping and breaking them down, covering their cages in shredded little leaves.

It’s kind of hard to get pictures of the action, but here’s Pratch hanging down from his swing to get at it:

Honestly, he usually stands right on the canes to strip them, but he had a little a little Wile E. Coyote-style accident the day before. Taking a tumble after snapping the branch he’d so recently been standing on made him a little more wary the following day.

Jack loves it too, but of course had to get nosy when the camera came out:

He actually has it somewhat easier, being smaller, lighter and (sorry, Pratch!) more agile, he climbs and hangs all over the stuff- it’s a completely free jungle gym.

Proving that I am totally insane, I briefly considered buying another of those tiny, innocuous containers of the stuff at the nursery, thinking I could leave it in its pot between the parrot cages. They could strip stuff at their leisure, Pratchett could have a screen between himself and the hated Jack, and the bamboo would be contained and unable to spread.

Luckily I came to my senses, which, contrary to popular belief actually does happen once in awhile. But if you’re looking for a low cost, high yield parrot toy, this one fits the bill! Or beak. Or talon…

After thinking about the Gulf so much I decided to I needed a little communing with the the Aquarium of the Americas…

Moving quickly past the smiling sting rays…

and the Lionfish being stalked…

beyond the curious penguins plotting their escape… Read the rest of this entry »

So when I heard that you could drop off hair, fur and nylon at (of all places) the Ritz Carlton, I was a little confused. It’s to help absorb the spilled oil in the Gulf, and while anything that helps is worthwhile, I couldn’t imagine how stuffing used pantyhose with cut up hair was going to help.

Here’s how, and it’s all pretty amazing:

Crossposted to NoteworthyInNola

The herons are busy in Audubon Park these days, molting and nesting on the Island Rookery.

The number of birds on these few trees is staggering- especially when you take into account that each one is around 3 feet high:

I’ll go back in a month or so and see if we can get pics of chicks.

I’ve been working on repopulating the garden, and and of course the hibiscus are what draw my attention first and foremost. This one is Creole Lady, and has been blooming pretty steadily for the last few weeks, making me very happy:

She actually lasts 2-3 days, her colors changing. The pinkish fringe becomes orange and the center gets darker. IMHO it’s prettiest when it first opens, but any hibiscus is better than no hibiscus, right?

I was playing in the garden, so naturally Bianca arrives to show me what a real Creole lady looks like…

Last year it was only Pratchett in the kitchen and he felt his life was good. To Pratch’s dismay, I brought Jack in this year, too, and set up their various toys in the gap. Yesterday was the first day they really got to explore, and they were both so excited they forgot about each other and just played. I thought it was progress…

(cue ominous music)

Pratch was happily ringing every bell in the place when he remembered the ones on the far side of Jack’s cage. He used the net to navigate over, and Jack spotted him like a shadow passing over the sun.

At the last moment, the boy sensed something was wrong…

But it was too late… Jack attack!

All Jack really got was a beak full of red tail feathers. Pratch was fine…well, everything but his ego. He was quite grouchy for a little while, but a few almonds smoothed his feathers.

Still, I’m determined to have a peaceable kingdom. Eventually.

He really wants those little balls OUT of the rattle but can’t manage to break it open.

For those of you who aren’t crazy parrot people, I’ll mention that the fluffing up at the end is something birds do when they’re aggrevated.

Ol’ Jack’s been having himself a fine time lately. He’s started really playing with toys all over the place, and suddenly he’s started talking. Senegal parrots aren’t especially known for their ability to speak, but I think this one’s gonna be a firecracker.

One of Pratch’s favorite things to say is “Peek-a-boo! I seeeeeee you….” About a week ago, I got worried about the boy- I thought he had a horrible case of the hiccups, but then I realized he was saying “peeka! peeka! peeka!” over and over… he’s working on adding the “boo” now. He’s been saying ‘hello’ for awhile, and the newest vocabulary word is Pratchett’s own “Pew!”

He’s generally just feeling his oats and stealing whatever he can get his beak on. In his mind he’s about 6 feet tall, large and in charge.
Read the rest of this entry »

We headed out to the bayou on a day that was supposed to turn sunny but never did, and on overcast days, particularly early in the morning, everybody and everything tends to sleep in.

Except for this family of nutria who were out foraging. And yes, with nutria, ‘foraging’ means ‘destroying everything in sight.’ Nutria are just eating machines, gnawing their way through the ecosystem, causing ungodly amounts of damage- it’s estimated that they are currently impacting 20,300 acres of marsh.

They look very much like beavers, but with a rat tail and bright orange chompers.

The beasts were intentionally introduced to the area in the 1930s as a source of fur, but the public didn’t like its feel and it never caught on. Their meat is bitter and unpalatable*, so nutria have no natural enemies and they breed like rabbits, in litters of 3 or 4. Hunters had no reason to bother to go after the animals until a bounty was instituted in 2005, paying $5 per nutria tail brought in to prove the kill, though it’s hard to know if the program has really helped very much.

So, yeah, they’re awful. Except, you look at the babies, and they don’t look like evil incarnate:

There’s a new movement afoot to try to make nutria fur fashionable. After all, there are those who’d like to wear fur, but can’t justify the cruelty- here you get to have your fur and feel like you’re helping the environment, too.

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* Recipes for nutria meat tell you that you must soak the meat in brine a minimum of 24 hours to make it edible at all- and recommend 3 days in the salt solution if possible. How many people are going to be bothered?

Jack took the longest time to decide he wanted to eat his veggies, but once he did, he became quite the piggy…

And now he doesn’t only like his greens, but his pinks and reds and yellows too.