I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year, and that my Jewish friends are enjoying Hanukah. If you celebrated something else, I hope you enjoyed that too!

The holidays at our house....well....you know how things are at my house.

On Friday, I took the pair-a-tweeters for their family planning meeting with the vet. I got them out of Pair-a-Tweeter Manor and into their Mobile Home ( the previous cage) without too much trouble. I wrapped the whole thing in a wool blanket, pre-heated the car, and got them to the clinic. The emminent Dr. Hatchling was not in, but I saw one of his associates who seemed very skilled and knowlegable. I explained the circumstances surrounding our rescue of the green parakeet, formerly known as Dorothy (more on this in a minute) and the appearance of three broken eggs in the cage.

"Well, the easiest way to not have baby parakeets is to move the birds to two seperate cages" the vet told me.

"I bet there are people who wouldn't have thought of that." I said, in what I hoped was a sympathetic, not condescending, voice. After all, it takes all kinds of people to make up the world. "The thing is, they seem very attached to each other. I've read that parakeets are very social birds. I only wanted to keep this one from starving to death in the street, but now they're quite used to each other."

"Hmm. Well, lets test them for diseases that are common to these birds. We'll have to weigh them. Are they flighted? They can fly?"

"Oh, yes they can and how!" I said.

"Well, they'll have to go in a bag"

"Excuse me?"

I don't wanna go in a bag! it sounded like Buckbeak said from the cage. They hadn't made too much noise up til that point. I don't think they were convinced that the office cat was entirely friendly, or at least, not terribly hungry.

"We just pop them into a paper bag on the scale to get their weight."

Well, okay, that makes sense. But really, it's bad enough getting weighed at the doctors office without getting stuck in a paper bag! On the other hand, I know the last time I got weighed at the doctors I wouldn't have minded having a paper bag over my head.

"Okay, in you go!" said the vet assistant, dropping the first parakeet into the bag on the scale. Whereupon the whole bag took off - jumped right off of the scale! "Wow! This bird really has some energy."

The vet completed her examination. "The only 100% certain way to tell the sex of parakeets is through a lab test, and it may be more than you want to spend. However, I think you have them mixed up. I think the yellow bird is the girl and the green parakeet is the boy."

"No wonder he's such a cranky bird since we've been calling him 'Dorothy' the whole time."

"It's a very common problem. Very easy mistake to make. You're right, this little yellow bird is young, and the cere - that's the colored part on the bridge of their nose - doesn't take on it's true color until the parakeet is older. Even then, sometimes when the birds are pale like this, it's very difficult for a lay person, or even a vet who doesn't see that many birds, to make a mistake. Happens all the time."

I looked into the cage. I could swear that both birds were looking up at my with an expression of relief and exasperation. As if to say, "Thank God somebody set you straight, you stupid woman!"

"Well, this practice has a great reputation, and you certainly seem very knowlegable. If it's your professional opinion that the yellow bird is female and the green bird is male then - they'll have to have different names. But, I do want to get the blood work done, especially in light of the fact that some of those illnesses you mentioned can be transmitted to humans."

"Okay, we'll just get a blood sample from each. We'll be right back."

They were gone forever.

Meanwhile the waiting room filled up with one cockatoo, two cats in carriers, two adult dogs ( all of these belonged to one woman who was there by herself - and dressed for work!) and a 3 month old puppy who was a cross between a newfoundlandland and.....something else.....like a great dane, or possibly a moose. At 3 months old he was larger than both the mixed breed adult dogs and larger than Winston had been - or maybe it was just all that fluffy fur. He immediately lept upon my feet with joy and began to chew my shoes in earnest.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" his owner said, "He's teething."

"It's no sweat, they're old shoes."

Whereupon the office cat came out and threw the whole place into an uproar of squalking, barking, meowing, scabbering claws, flapping wings and barking, making it nessesary for the receptionist to scream into the phone at the top of her lungs.

After awhile, the vet and her assistant came back with my bird cage. I got up on what was left of my tennis shoes and followed them back into the exam room.

"You can't seperate these birds." The vet said matter of factly, "it would be cruel. They have a very strong bond to each other." She set the cage gently on the examining table, and looked at the birds a little whistfully.

"They're in love." The vet assistant clarified.

I already knew that. But there is no love in science, only biochemical reactions, so I just smiled.

"It is possible, though not likely, that you have two female birds here. Not likely, no. But the eggs may not be fertilized - it may just be behaviour that is an expression of their bond. You could try re-arranging the items in their cage to discourage nesting. If they're, er, gonna do it and you're not going to try to stop them then the main thing is to make sure they stay healthy and that they have enough calcium. I'll give you a brochure...." the vet wandered out.

"It's not really considered professional for vets to encourage novices to breed birds." the vet assistant said, "but you've obviously done a lot of research. Just be careful what you read on the net."

"The confusion on the internet was what made me realize I needed a professional opinion." I said. "Regardless of anything else, it's in their nature to mate and it's not like there's parakeet birth control. They're not like cats. I don't feel as if I have the right to interfere with what nature intended just because it's inconvenient - to say nothing about expensive. But, it's not like parakeets got together and signed a petition and asked to be domesticated. I mean, I took responsibility for the birds. I have to take all of it, not part of it. Otherwise, I should have simply dropped Dorothy, er, the green one, at the pound. I realize they're not all that smart, but anybody can see they have feelings."

The parakeets sat side by side, their wings touching on their perch in the "mobile home".

"Man, you really knew where to land!" the vet assistant remarked to the green parakeet. To me she said, " You probably ARE going to have at least one baby bird."

"Hmph. Maybe when I die I can be the patron saint of unintended consequences." I said, and went out to pay my bill.

That's one of the easiest ways to tell if you're doing the right thing - it always costs a lot.