(Sorry if you've heard this one before. This disability thing makes it hard to get out and find new stuff to talk about)

The other day I cleaned out the pair-a-tweeter cage. Generally speaking, this is not a big deal. Well, it is for Dorothy Dagwood, who is afraid of eveything in the house, except for my enormous mastiff, Winston. She and Winston have a really weird relationship. Every once in awhile, when she's down close to his nose level at her seed dish, Winston comes over and gives her a sniff and sits down and looks up at her as if expecting her to say something....

....and she DOES say something, in parakeet. I don't speak parakeet - at least not well - and I don't know if the dog does or not. But Dorothy Dagwood doesn't give him the aggressive scolding noises she gives everybody else, except her mate Blondie. She talks to him in low, conversational parakeet, and then, after awhile, he leaves.

But, I digress.

The point is that though I change their paper and generally clean their cage every other day, about once a month I give it a good, thorough cleaning, taking everything apart and soaking it and making sure that there's no bird funk in the crevices.

The problem is that I hadn't been able to do this for the last two months because of my health, so by now the cage was really getting objectionable, and giving me a huge guilt trip besides. I had read in Bird Talk magazine that an easy way to clean a funky cage is to just put the whole thing in the shower (without the birds of course) to losen up any junk in the hard to reach places.

It sounded good. Blondie perched on the little parakeet play gymn beside the cage and Dorothy Dagwood did too. Usually, they stay right there, eat parakeet treats and fight over the swing.
But this time, as soon as she couldn't see her cage anymore, Dorothy Dagwood FREAKED OUT.

I heard the desperate alarm call of her mate from the bathroom as she took off (You don't have to speak parakeet to know he was saying "Dorothy! Come back! You know you can hardly fly and even worse you don't know how to land!") I tried to pick her up off the windowsill but she was in a panic and flew several times around the living room untill, exhaused she landed on top of Kendi's cage with a thump.

Uh-Oh. This was bad. Kendi is very protective about her cage. Blondie sometimes tries this, but as soon as she sees Kendi coming towards her she flies off. This is really the bird equivelent of coming into somebody's house without knocking - you only do it if you are a family member or really good friend.

Rob says that he thinks Kendi sees the Pair-a-Tweeters as her "noisy redneck neighbors".

The trouble was that Dorothy was really exhausted, and....well, parakeets brains are only the size of peas, and sometimes I think Dorothy hit her head, or something, when she was out "in the wild" before we found her. But, then, as you'll see, she may not be so dumb after all.....

So Kendi was coming slowly up the side of the cage. She swayed back and forth in the aggressive "get off my cage" pose. Dorothy still wasn't getting it. So Kendi pecked her on the foot. Chomp.

Well, that got Dorothy, now bleeding, motivated. She took off and landed somewhere just as the drain in the bathroom, where the shower was still running made an unpleasant sound. I ran into the bathroom, turned off the water, ran back out to find that Blondie had left the perch and was on the search for Dorothy. Unfortunately she decided to look in the basement, where The Hub's work shop is...and there are all kinds of things a parakeet could get into trouble with down there. So I ran down the stairs and began to search for Blondie, whom I found looking very confused in my husband's office.

Carrying Blondie, I ran back up the stairs at a speed that my physical therapist would have never thought possible. I deposited him on the play gymn, went to the cabinet to look for some stypic to stop the bleeding on Dorothy's foot, and then found we didn't have any.

Crap! How bad a peck was it? Generally, birds don't really hurt each other, they just peck enough to get their point accross. But Dorothy is a little parakeet, Kendi is almost twice her weight. How much blood can a parakeet lose? How much do they HAVE anyway?

And, most importantly, where was Dorothy Dagwood? Taking a deep breath, I looked around the living room. I have a collection of bird figurines above the television. And that's where she was, still as any member of that painted flock, virtually indistinguishable from the antique parakeet salt and pepper shakers.

The bleeding had slowed down considerably, but as soon as I approached, I could tell she was going to take off again. So, I went back in the bathroom, got the cage all cleaned up and returned it to it's normal place. Sure enough, as soon as she saw it, she went right for it. I popped her back in there, Blondie followed and began to look his mate over and groom her while I refilled their food and water dishes.

All this beating of wings and aggression in the air was too much for Winston. He had gone into the back bedroom to lay down in peace.

I looked into the cage anxiously. Dorothy Dagwood seemed okay, though she was standing on only her good foot. The bleeding had stopped. Should I call the vet? Should I go up to PetSmart for stypic in case the bleeding started again?

I decided to follow the 80% health rule. You know, I read that 80% of things, like cuts and colds and stuff like that, will get better on their own if you just follow normal precautions and leave them alone. Parakeets have lived in the wild with larger birds since time out of mind. If she got worse, I'd take her to the emergency vet, I decided.

I sat down next to Kendi's cage. "You know, K-Bird, I'm very disappointed in you." I said, "You know that Dorothy is rescue. She doesn't know how to fly or land. She might not even know the rules of being a bird. She's a lot smaller than you are. I want you to think about this: did you REALLY need to beak her on the foot that hard?"

Kendi sat on her perch, looked at me, and fluffed her feathers. "Hi K-Bird." she said, conversationally.

What am I doing? I'm sitting here trying to reason with parrot! This is not going to work!

By now, Dorothy Dagwood and Blondie had had a nice preen and Dorothy was taking a nap. K-Bird was playing with one her paper toys. The dog was snoring in the other room.

My heart was beating like hummingbird wings, my hair was plastered to the sides of my head from sweat and steam from the shower, I was exhausted and could feel an asthma attack comming on. I decided I'd better lay down.

It's a god thing I don't have any kids. God must have known what he was doing. Looks like birds are almost more than I can handle!