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Ad Astra,

The Bride of the First House.
bride (at) livejournal (dot) com

weather	:		rain
outside	:		16°C
mood	:		giggly

Skippy

Sid

Guai-Guai

You may now gape in utter speechlessness. =)

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		15°C
mood	:		sad/resigned

The Husband

He was talking to me a while ago about getting over Guai-Guai's disappearance. He's a bit surprised that it had been less than a week and he'd already started to "get over it". And he said that he was also okay with Grandma's death in a short time as well — heh, we were goofing around in bed the morning after (no sexually explicit material; I'm not like that, sheesh =), but the debilitating sadness was pretty sporadic. I guess he thought that because he didn't feel sad longer, it meant he didn't love them as much as he ought.

I pointed out that losing someone who was suffering, as Grandma did, was always going to come with a little relief and the feeling that the death was actually a good thing, which is easier to accept. At Grandma's age and condition, that was the reality of it.

The bird... well, what's happened has happened. We've done everything we can to try to find him and there has to be a cut-off point where we say, "okay, that's it, he's gone". We couldn't keep escalating the search effort and our Rainy Day Fund — though I must say, is impressive for us — isn't bottomless.

No one can tell you how to grieve, for how long, in what way. It's highly individual in each case.

His grandfather, though, is a different kind of loss.

Grandpa was in town this last week and is slowly showing more and more signs of dementia. He's headed back to Taiwan now, but ... what a week. He forgets that Grandma is gone and keeps demanding to know (sometimes angrily) where she is. He blurs people together, often we're not sure if he's talking about Mother-In-Law, Grandma or his caretaker lady. He'll also transpose the caretaker lady and Grandma. He'll open the door, walk outside for no reason we know of and try to open other peoples' car doors with whatever is in his pocket (loose change?). He definitely can't be left alone.

He's still coherent when he's well rested. He asked me when we were going to Taiwan next and we had a pleasant conversation. But when Grandpa is tired, he starts hallucinating. It's very common in the elderly, but it scares everyone around them. Several times, Grandpa kept saying there were little kids. "What are those kids doing in our yard?!" ... there were no kids. Then he saw kids in his room and on his bed.

The night his jetlag hit the hardest, he completely flipped out about "the other people in the house", reamed us all out for renting out the house to other people (we're not renting anything out) and they were all stealing his stuff (he's already taken all his valuables with him the last time he was here). And he'd forget that he'd already yelled at us about it and repeatedly blew up several times about the same thing.

Watching a loved one deteriorate, mentally or physically, hurts just as much as actually losing them.

This is something Husband Guy hasn't experienced and I have limited exposure to. I offered to help him find a family support group or a counsellor or something if he needed someone to talk or someone who can help.

*sigh*

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		13°C
mood	:		crushed

We spent all Sunday sticking up posters and went door to door around our neighbourhood handing out a b&w printout of the same poster.

We got a lot of kind words from everyone, a lot of advice as to what we can do to help Guai-Guai find his way home. People have trees and bird feeders in their yards, so some of them get a lot of birds in their yard. They said they'd keep an eye out for him.

They told us to put his cage outside. And to play a recording of his chirping so he might recognize it and follow the sound home. We also talked to the people at the Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park because they have an aviary/bird sanctuary and people will bring found birds to them sometimes.

We got an ad in a local paper for wider distribution.

But.

This afternoon, Husband got a call from a lady who said she saw a large hawk-like bird flying overhead with a smaller bird struggling in its mouth that sort of fit the description of Guai-Guai (from a distance, he looks white and he _is_ a house bird, so he'd be dumber than the other animals at escaping).

I'm a mess right now. I'm glad I have an office with a door.

I would have gone home if it weren't for this potentially huge news about my project that could have me in New York on business in the next few weeks. Which means I have a lot to do here. It's supposed to be a great opportunity, good-exciting, good-scary, role promotion thing for me. But I just can't find it in me to be too happy about it right now.

weather	:		mostly clear
outside	:		10°C
mood	:		sad

His wings hadn't been clipped in a while and they had grown back. Husband Guy had him on his shoulder and went outside to the back patio for just a few minutes. Suddenly, the little guy just took off and over the roof of two houses.

The guys spent over an hour looking for him. They couldn't hear him, so either he's too scared to chirp out or he just doesn't want to be found.

Husband Guy is pretty broken up about it. The bird was very special to him because Guai-Guai was the very last decision Grandma Jing-Tsun made on her own before her condition deteriorated for the last time. When we got him in October 2001, they told us that he was 3 months old. We decided that our wedding day was his birthday.

He's pulling up some pictures we took of Guai-Guai for a poster. We can only hope for the best. And if we don't find him, we're hoping that someone else does and takes him in, like Kaesha.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		9°C
mood	:		too amused

OMG, it was so hilarious. He was bobbing his head, chirp-squawking what sounded like *ree-ree-ree-ree-REE-reeree-ree-ree-ree-ree-REE* and really getting into it. He knew to chirp and rest at the right time to the rhythm, he sometimes varied it... it was amazing =O

He's our Little Angry Off-White Rapper With Feathers. =D

We tried to record a clip but he figured something was up and he wouldn't do it anymore. =\

weather	:		light rain
outside	:		8°C
mood	:		mild
music	:	Mozart - Symphony No. 38

I think he's fully grown now. His personality is certainly set - he's crusty, yet insecure; brazen, yet a big wussball. Here's a little clip of him (4M; 16s) playing one of his favorite games - he's jangling keys and singing. He was doing this for a good 5 minutes.

What he's trying to sing is "This Old Man". He has the "This old man / He plays one" part down pat, but the rest of it is a mess. It sounds like he's tone deaf. We think he was a lousy jazz pianist ("keys", get it?) in a divey lounge in his past life. =D

He also does this warbling sound. We couldn't figure out what it was at first. We thought it was to get sympathy because it sounded a bit sad-ish. But I was within earshot of his cage once and someone's cell phone rang. He warbled after every ring. He was trying to be a cell phone, it was the funniest thing =D

weather	:		cloudy
outside	:		13°C
mood	:		okay

Wow, I haven't written in a while. I've been hanging around.

Germs are under control for the time being. Work is going smoothly. I worked the booth at the SFU Tech2002 Career Fair yesterday. I'm so much more impressed with the SFU kids - there were even a few that I liked so much that I recommended that we interview and maybe make an offer to. There were less of the "tell me what your company is all about" questions and more engaging questions. The SFU students didn't whine about our Challenge Questions being "too long" or "too hard" like the ones at UBC. *BOGGLE*, you're making a great impression to a potential employer, moron... At UBC, there's a bigger spread of student quality. The good ones can be really brilliant, but the idiots are real pieces of work.

And, honestly, I saw the beginnings of this when I was still an undergrad at UBC as well. I knew back then as a student org. executive that the Computer Science undergrads were a tough crowd. I'm not the only one - my Maid of Honour was an undergrad in CS as well back then. I remember she mentioned this a lot to me and to other people. It's just disheartening that it's my own Alma Mater, my own department, a very pivotal part of my life and not only having to be disappointed at the students' behaviour, past and present, but to have to agree with my colleagues that, yes, there were an awful lot of whiners at the UBC Career Fair.

MIL Woman is out of town (she has been since near the end of September and won't be back until early November). *shrug* No biggie.

The Wife Thing^® isn't as scary as I thought, even for a totally Kitchen Challenged^®, Food Impaired^® and Generally Housely Retarded^® one like myself. It is hard to cook for only two people though. Even so, I wouldn't want to cook for anyone else except Husband Guy. Both of us are fine with whatever we make, as long as it's edible. But I'm sure I'd get negative points on presentation.

We've been doing pretty well though. We usually finish everything that was made for dinner and we get fresh food almost every evening. I've been doing more vegetable dishes than meat and using less oil, less salt than MIL Woman and no MSG.

Guai-Guai has been okay. Still the troll brat that he is. We thought he might have mites again and brought him back to Dr. Dhillon, his vet. He rooted around Guai-Guai's tummy and wings, but didn't see any on him. We got some Ivomec again, but Husband Guy says to wait a bit and see if we can actually see any mites on the troll first.

I did some stuff for the weddingplans community. The community maintainership gets handed off to a new bride-to-be when the maintainer gets married. incognita is the new maintainer and is all gung-ho about doing community improvements, so I've been helping out. It's such a high when things get done. =)

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		23°C
mood	:		kinda discouraged
music	:	Alfven - Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, Midsommarvaka

Kaesha is going home tomorrow. And not a moment too soon =P

It's not that we don't like Kaesha or anything. Kaesha and Guai-Guai like each other, they're really friendly and want to play together. But because Kaesha doesn't know us and is skittish about standing on our hands, he won't let us take him out to play with Guai-Guai. We won't put Guai-Guai in Kaesha's cage because it's really small and it wouldn't be easy to bring him back out if anything happens. This makes them both really frustrated because they can't play together.

The most we can do is let Guai-Guai walk around on the roof of Kaesha's cage. Invariably, we'll decide that it's time for Guai-Guai to go back into his own cage and try to pick him up. Guai-Guai never wants to go back to his own cage. He'd rather play on Kaesha's roof. The net result is that they're both really pissed off at us humans. We've noticed that Guai-Guai has started biting us harder and harder. He used to just peck at us with his beak, but in the last week, he's broken skin a few times so far.

It's gotten to the point where we have to shove a stick at him, let him bite the stick as hard as he damned well wants and step onto the stick, then put him back into his own cage.

I hope the Psychotic Little Troll unlearns the biting after Kaesha leaves.

weather	:		partially sunny
outside	:		21°C
mood	:		okay
music	:	Paganini - Etude No. 3, La Campanella

And so begins the quest to buy Guai-Guai a wife.

MIL Woman has been looking on and off for a little while, but can't find a female Lutino/Fancy cockatiel for a good price. We went to two Petcetera's and one Pet Habitat today, but they either had no cockatiels left at all or all the ones left were the grey and mixed kind. I was teasing that "he's such a loser that we can't even BUY him a wife" =D =D =D Husband Guy always pretends to be irked when I poke fun at Guai-Guai =)

Anyway, if we get a female cockatiel, I think I'm going to suggest calling her "鵑鵑". 鵑 as in 杜鵑 meaning "Azalea" (pic on the left).

Pronunciation-wise: PinYin - "juan1juan1"; Anglo - "jyen jyen", kinda like "jen jen" the diminuitive of "Jennifer". I just don't want anyone pronouncing it "wahn" as in the Spanish "Juan". =P

The interesting thing is that the character '鵑', even though it's the name of a flower, has '鳥' (bird) as a harmonic. So, it's very apropos. =)

weather	:		cloudy
outside	:		16°C
mood	:		pleased

Last night went well. Kaesha gave a demur chirp every once in a while close to midnight, but I think once the house goes dark and no one's moving around, he settles down too.

I didn't do too badly with my teeth guard either. My dentist warned me that some people have trouble falling asleep with it on. By evening, I was thinking that I'd be doomed with K squawking and my teeth guard keeping me from falling asleep. But it was okay. It was weird having a hunk of plastic in my mouth, but it was okay.

This morning, when I took it out, my teeth felt "pushed"... I don't know how else to describe it. It's the feeling that you get, in the root of your teeth, in the gums, when your teeth get pushed one way and held like that for a while. Then when you let go or push it in the opposite direction, you get this strange feeling...

weather	:		clear
outside	:		17°C
mood	:		amused
music	:	Ben Heppner - Aida, Celeste Aida (Verdi)

Well, Kaesha didn't like the ride home, but as soon as he got to our place and saw Guai-Guai, he started singing and twittering and chirping non-stop like the happiest thing in the world. Kaesha was even more vocal than in the office. Guai-Guai just stared in confused silence - brain the size of a pea. It was pretty amusing.

K is about 5 or 6 years old, so he has more of a "repetoire" than G does. K sounds really nice when he's being chirpy and singy.

K still doesn't know us, so he doesn't like us reaching into his cage. We let G walk around on the roof. K kept chattering and chattering at G. K's head was near the top of the cage, so the tuft of feathers on top of his head stuck out of the roof. G would chase the feathers around trying to nibble on them =) Meanwhile, K would chase G's feet and try to nip at them =D

So far, it seems like they like each other... through the safety of the cage anyway. Guai-Guai got pissed off when MIL Woman tried to take him off Kaesha's roof. Kaesha would squawk really loudly when Guai-Guai was taken away. But we probably won't try putting them together for a few days, if at all.

I have no idea what's going to happen tonight... I'm not sure what we'd do if Kaesha is going to be vocal all night long.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		17°C
mood	:		cheerful

Kaesha is sitting in his cage in the lounge area that's near my desk. Kaesha's a boy =)

He looks exactly the same as Guai-Guai in every way. They both have that Cockatiel Pattern Baldness, they both have the same colouring and everything. Kaesha's wings aren't clipped though.

S said that if MIL Woman likes him, we can keep him. S's family was kinda just being a host family for Kaesha anyway. We'll see how Kaesha and Guai-Guai get along.

Kaesha's vocalizing every once in a while and I have curious co-workers wandering over to find out what that chirping is all about =) Heeheehee... perturbed co-workers are very amusing. =)

weather	:		hot
outside	:		24°C
mood	:		guilty
music	:	Vivaldi - Violin Concerto in F Minor, Opus 8, No. 4

Ah shit.

I was cutting Guai-Guai's toenails and I cut too close. He started bleeding. =P He stopped after a minute or two, but he would bleed a little again if he got upset or excited. I got him to walk on some flour and distracted him with a zipper pull. That helped.

All because I noticed that I could hold his toes without much consequence. He'd flap and try to get away, but obviously couldn't. He'd bite me but it didn't hurt me enough to actually let go. So I thought, cool, I'll just hold his toes and clip.

Well, he still twitches and flaps. And here I am, wanting to snip quickly and get it over with because <sarcasm>I imagine</sarcasm> it's traumatizing to be held captive by one toe. I know how to tell where the blood vessel starts and how deep to cut, if I could only SEE what I was doing.

But his toenails were getting so long and sharp that he was getting caught in everything, including just walking up my sleeve. When he gets caught halfway up to my shoulder, there's nothing I can do except stand still and let him beat my face in, trying flap himself free.

Meh. =(

weather	:		overcast
outside	:		19°C
mood	:		cheerful

My co-worker, S, asked me this morning if we could birdsit for her cockatiel. When she described it, her bird is a Guai-Guai exactly =) Her best friend found Kaesha on the street five years ago and took it in. I guess it flew away from someone... Hmmm, Grandma's previous cockatiel flew away 10 years ago... cockatiels live 18-20 years... HMMM...

Anyway, I think S's best friend moved somewhere where animals are not allowed, so she gave the bird to S's daughter.

S also has a cat that is 1) really smart (like "has-figured-out-how-to-open-doors" smart)*; 2) great with humans (allows the children to drag him around by the tail), but is totally Alpha with other animals to the point of beating to death any new pets they get; and 3) really good at catching birds. She always finds dead/half-dead birds on her bed, in the laundry, etc.

The problem is S's entire family is going away on vacation for 10/11 days in August. They planned this vacation before they got the bird. Their cat has his own sitter, but she's afraid that Kaesha will be à la King'ed while they're gone.

I called my MIL and she said it would be okay for us to birdsit for the 10 days. MIL Woman wants to get another cockatiel as a companion for Guai-Guai. I figured, this way we can see how Guai-Guai reacts to another bird before we get another one. If they don't get along, they can be kept separate, Kaesha has his/her own cage.

S doesn't know much about birds, so she doesn't know how to tell if it's a boy or girl. S's daughter keeps Kaesha in her room.

It sounds like Kaesha is still very uncertain of his/her new surroundings in S's house. When she described his behaviour, it was verbatim what our Little Troll did when we first got him - spreading his wings and puffing. She also told me about Kaesha being very vocal when her best friend still had it - every time her best friend would talk to S on the phone, S would hear the bird chirping away too... JUST like our Little Troll. =D

This should be interesting. I hope Guai-Guai doesn't beat up Kaesha...

* Buddy-Girl-K wrote to me re: Cats & Doors

I was just reading your LJ and had a comment to make. Cats CAN open doors and they DON'T have to be handles like the one you linked to. [Me: the link is in my comments] We had a cat years ago who could open round knobs. The one I remember her opening was in our bathroom, which had a counter that went right up to the door. She would sit on the edge of the counter and roll the knob towards her, paw over paw, until the door swung free.

This is not an urban legend, folks, I saw it with my own eyes. Cats are way clever. Kinda like seeing one using a toilet, AND flushing! :D

weather	:		sunny
mood	:		happy
music	:	Paganini - Variations on a Theme (Rossini)

Another funny thing about the Guai-Guai troll is his singing.

We've been teaching him the tune to This Old Man... _/~ This old man; he plays one; he plays knick-knack on my thumb; with a knick-knack, paddy-whack, give a dog a bone; this old man came rolling home. _/~

He can do maybe the first six notes - he does this old man; he plays one which is just three notes played twice. Then he just tweets a whole bunch of notes that vaguely resemble the rest of it, but not quite. It's pretty funny.

So, that's our psychotic, willful little singing troll that doesn't like sunflower seeds.

weather	:		sunny
mood	:		amused

I haven't written about our cockatiel, Guai-Guai, in a long time.

He's a pretty psychotic, willful little troll. We started getting his wings clipped every few months so he couldn't fly as far. He still has 2 feathers on each side, which is what my MIL wanted. I told her that they only need 1 feather on each side to fly and she wouldn't believe me. Then she's all surprised that he can still fly. Like, yeah, that's what I said.

So, now he has a difficult time flying, but still flies around when he wants to. He's built up some serious muscles in his wings this way. He knows he can still do it, so he does. It just gets easier and easier every time. The pet store staff told us that later on this year, they'll start only clipping one side of his wings. This way, when he tries to take off, he'll immediately twist in one direction. Maybe then, he'll learn not to try taking off.

Cockatiels usually like sunflower seeds. Our little troll hates them. He'll eat all the small seeds in his food tray, but leaves the sunflower behind. The last time we took him to the pet store to get his wings and nails clipped, he looked a lot skinnier than the other cockatiels which makes sense because sunflower seeds are really oily.

Unlike other normal cockatiels, Guai-Guai doesn't like people touching him. He'll stand on your finger or arm or your shoulder, but he won't let you pet him or touch him.

When he was being clipped, he bites, struggles and screams like he's being tarred and feathered alive. Last time was no different. The most hilarious thing was watching the other animals in their cages. They're doing their own thing, napping, chewing, playing and whatever. All of a sudden they leap up, turn their heads and peer over to see where the Death Squawking is coming from.

Every single animal: puppies, kittens, birds, ferrets, guinea pigs, etc. were frozen and staring at the back room where the little psychotic troll is screaming. =D Husband Guy, MIL woman and I just about died laughing.

[

weather

|

partially sunny

]

[

water

|

5

]

[

mood

|

not great

]

[

music

|

Jerry Goldsmith - The Inner Light Suite

]

Guai-Guai got his feathers clipped this morning. He has two of the longest feathers left on each side left. All the other feathers on his wings are cut to half an inch (I'm guessing from some descriptions I've read).

He should be able to land safely (if, say for example, he were to fall *cough*bepushed*cough* off a shoulder or something =D), but not fly on his own. I've also read that all they need is one feather on either side to fly. But we'll see.

[	weather	|		cloudy	]
[	mood	|		okay	]
[	water	|		0	]

Guai-Guai has an appointment on Tuesday to get his wings clipped. Finally. And for $5.00 =D

[	weather	|		sunny and icy	]
[	mood	|		cheerful	]

Guai-Guai has been eating like the dickens recently and filling out sideways. Do cockatiels go through puberty? I'm thinking this might be a growth spurt. But he's only 6 months old and he's supposed to live 18-20 years.

He's getting interested in people-food now, he goes to investigate when he sees us eating. He'll climb up our arms and stand on our shoulders. Guai-Guai can also fly great distances when he wants to and defiance is definitely a part of his developing personality.

I keep telling them to clip his wings or get them clipped at a pet groomer's. I even pointed out that Petcetera does pet grooming.

*shrug* One of these days, some extended family member is going to take him out of the cage and he's going to either get pissed off or otherwise get the urge to fly. Out the front door that's held wide open when people are bumbling around, taking their nice old time coming into the house or leaving, for example. But then, what do I know...

[	weather	|		cloudy, wanting to rain	]
[	mood	|		blah	]

Guai-Guai needs to have his claws clipped again. He just put a gash in my hand again. His wings also need clipping too because he can fly straight up and go about 10-15 feet.

I can do it, but I don't want to. It's not fair that I'm The Evil One all the time - I clipped his claws last time and I held him down to feed him the Ivomec for his mites last time. Guai-Guai already looks at me suspiciously when I try to play with him.

So, if Husband or Mother-In-Law don't want to do it, I'll probably take him to a pet groomer and give them the invoice.

[	weather	|		cloudy	]
[	mood	|		giggly	]

g9-5555555555555555555555555555555555]`flx5x.sll9f99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999966666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666 ht666666666666666666667=34 e66g55562666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666o666-

[	weather	|		sunny	]
[	mood	|		okay	]

Our vet appointment is at 1:00pm. We found a pet hospital close to our place (King Edward & Oak). It's $35.00 for the initial examination and probably an, as of yet, undetermined small fortune for whatever procedure, drugs and materials.

*garumph* And they were going to use the sand straight from the beach without even rinsing it.

[Update - 1745h]

He has mites. We brought two of them that fell out of Guai-Guai last night. Dr. Dhillon said they were pretty common mites that turn up on small domestic pets like birds and guinea pigs.

But we're armed with Ivomec now. He got a 0.2cc dose at the Animal Hospital we took him to. Ivomec is mostly ingested, but can be used as a topical as well. So, in 10 days, we're supposed to squish another 0.2cc into his mouth, then rub a little of what's left on his head and under his wings. The cost wasn't too bad either. Our total came to just under $50.

<sarcasm> Oh boy, Guai-Guai was incredibly happy about having his head held and someone rifling through his tummy and wings for creepy-crawlies.</sarcasm> He doesn't like it when we pet him on the wings or touch his tail to begin with, he was really pissed off at today's abuse.

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEERK* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERK* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *squeeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *eeeeeeeeeeeerwk* *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEERK* *squeeeeeeeeeeeerwk* The whole time Dr. Dhillon was checking him out. Poor sweetie.

*sigh* And we'll have to do this next week. At least now we know how to hold him to medicate him or clip nails or what-not.

We bought him a new bird cage with a few toys from Petcetera. It's about double the size of the cage he has now, it has a poopie tray that's separated from the rest of the cage, so he can't walk all over his own poop. We're not going to need the sand anymore.

The cage comes with two tree branch perches and a little "playground" area on top of the cage. We got him a little wooden ladder and a rope swing as well.

[	weather	|		rainy	]
[	mood	|		grrrr	]

We saw little lice-like things crawling around on Guai-Guai tonight. No one has any idea where they could have come from. I know he's been obsessively scratching and grooming a lot for a long time, but no one else seemed to be worrying about it, so I didn't worry about it either. I thought, maybe, that's what birds are supposed to do all day.

We got sand from the beach to line the bottom of his cage. It was rinsed with cold water, but I'm thinking there could still be germs.

He's never been outside. He only eats what we give him. I've never seen that kind of insect in the house before. None of us have lice.

[	weather	|		cloudy	]
[	mood	|		calm	]

Last night, I decided that I didn't want to get my hands hacked up whenever I take Guai-Guai out of his cage to play. Every time I take him out, my hands look like they've been attacked repeatedly by a psychotic pygmy troll in a beserker rage. He doesn't do it on purpose, he just walks around. My skin is just extra sensitive to claw scratches.

I decided to clip his claws.

I saw some pet show a long time ago that showed how to trim cats' and dogs' claws and I could see where the nerve/blood pocket in his nail was. It was a huge patience game. It took me 20 minutes to half an hour to do one toe.

I did the first few with him standing on my finger. I had to edge just the very tip in between the clippers. The first one was really easy because he had no clue what was going on. He was startled by the loud *POIK* sound followed by his toe feeling really weird all of a sudden =) He investigated the strange feeling in his toe, licked it a bit but he was okay with it.

The second one went the same way. *POIK* *startled flapping* *investigate toe*

Guai-Guai started paying very close attention to what I was doing to his toes after that. =) He stared intently at The Suspicious Clippers and didn't like them touching his feet.

Every time they touched his feet, Guai-Guai's reflex was to adjust his step to get away from them. He would open up all four toes and grasp again. One out of these bazillion re-grasps would make the claw land between the clippers RIGHT WHERE I WANT IT, not too deep that I'll cut his nerve/blood pocket. And when I saw the right moment, I clipped quickly.

After a while, I put him on his dowel stand and clipped him that way. Only now, he'd fly off his dowel stand after he got the *POIK*. He was good about coming back onto my hand though, I guess because The Evil House is a bigger unkown than The Bride That's Doing Something To Me That I Don't Think I Like But Doesn't Really Hurt.

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The cockatiel is slowly becoming less afraid of us, now that we hand feed him =) We used to stick our hand in the cage door, Guai-Guai would put one foot on the feeding hand and hang on to the cage with the other. Then he'd put both feet on the hand.

Recently, we've taken to bringing him out of the cage while he's eating. =) We've gotten him to step onto this wooden rod stand and step back onto our hand on demand. He doesn't like standing on my outstretched finger. My MIL says it's because my fingers are so small that it's hard for him to clasp. He much prefers to stand on the padded base of my thumb.

Today, MIL Woman was taking him around the house a bit. She says that he was nervous, clasping his claws on her really tightly. Then she put him in front of a mirror. They were laughing as he was trying to figure out who that other bird was that "keeps copying him" and pecked at the mirror a bit.

Brain the size of a pea. =)

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We got Guai-Guai in early October. He hadn't been very social with us at first. He'd start quivering whenever someone looked at him and would try to get as far away from us humans as possible.

Lately, we've been trying to win his trust by hand feed him. We've been putting less birdseed in his trough so that his hunger overcomes his fear of us. He's still very cautious though. He takes upwards of an hour to decide if he's hungry enough to risk eating out of a hand. When my M-I-L hand feeds him, he puts one foot on her hand and the other foot is still hanging on to the cage, as if he wants to flee. He would also eat really fast, like at any moment, there was the danger that M-I-L would do something to him. =}

Well, I decided to give it a try this evening. I did just what she did and sat down for a long wait. Guai-guai stared very intently at the food. 10-15 minutes later, he climbed over to me - he gets around by grabbing the cage with his beak and swinging his claws over, grabbing the cage further down and swinging his claws over. He stepped right onto my hand with both feet and started munching.

I, not being an animal person at all, sat there fighting the reflex to pull my hand away. Here I had 8 very pointy claws poking into the pinkie edge of my hand and a sharp beak pecking at my palm... I'm like, please don't freak out and clinch and bite me... He didn't seem to be eating as hurriedly as I thought... maybe it was just because I was more nervous. He still kept eyeing me between munches.

Heh, he was afraid of me and I was afraid of him.

We have a baby cockatiel (two months old). He's mostly white with a bit of yellow, a yellow tuft of feathers on his head and bright orange clown spots on both cheeks. I don't think he officially has a name yet... although, I think my MIL has been calling him Guai-Guai (meaning "well-behaved"; "obedient"; "darling").

We need to get him a new cage. The one he's in right now is from eons ago when Grandma had the other cockatiel. It's all old and kinda rusty... which worries me because he holds onto the cage with his beak when he's climbing around. I also noticed that he's licking the cage... =P

His wings are still not clipped, so he can't be let out to run around yet. He's also still afraid of people, so we wouldn't want him freaking and flying all over to get away from us. I took some pictures, so I should be able to post some soon.

Of course, this roll of 36 exposure has been in my camera for a long time now (like over a year), so I don't know if the pictures will still turn out...

Grandma wants a cockatiel. She had one over ten years ago (before I met Husband Guy). But she was in the hospital, Grandpa left a window open and it flew away. It was in the middle of winter, so there wasn't anything we could do about it. I don't know how serious she is about getting one, but she's definitely going to bird stores and looking. Kinda like when I go to the pet store at the mall to look at puppies.