Hatch-day!

Happy Hatch-day Parrolis! 

Across the Persian Gulf,

the Indian Ocean

and the Bay of Bengal,

we are still flock.

all hail this awesome creature! 

Falcons, not fans

I am going to start an anti-stupidity campaign called "Falcons, not Fans". I am tired of reading forum entries about parrotlets that fly into working fans and get injured, or die instantly. People: do not have fans if you have birds. I am not sure birds are supposed to die by fan anyway. I think they are supposed to fly into the horizon escorted by a great white falcon made of clouds and fireflies, yes, a benevolent turuk makto of sorts.

It is funny, because when you tell people you have a parrot, the first thing they ask is "how long does he live"? Forever, I hope - how long will you live? So many people that should fly at speed into a working fan...  

Lime + coconut =

You put the lime in the coconut? Check.

 Echo-chirp! 

Being Migratory

The morning after our arrival to Qatar, Parrolito was all chirps and jumps. I was a mess of sleep hangover proportions for a week and a half. Migratory species for the win. Now, migrating a 24 gr. bird in a steel bird of, say, 250,000,000 gr. is the essence of cool.

Not to scale

The international flight went very well. I was a nervous wreck, thinking of the poor bird in the cargo hold for 12 hours, but I suspect that he was either sleeping, or torturing some poor puppy with his best soprano rendition of "do you want your broccoli?", in a loop, forever.

Parrot is my co-pilot

Although United Airlines informs on their website that they can carry "household birds" in cabin for domestic flights, we figured out early on that this meant budgies and lovebirds. Rather than trying to make sense of this, the only way to go about it was to call our bird a lovebird at check-in and during flight from San Francisco to New York. Budgies have such a long tail that I was anxious about meeting the random airline employee who knew his way around "household birds". Parrolito made an adequate lovebird, although given the insane territorial nature of these things, I feel that parrotlets might also be called hatebirds. 

Get him to the Gulf

It is taking a little bit longer to get Parrolito to the Greek Gulf. Just last month, the country decided to change the requirements for all pet imports, where now they require companies to ¨sponsor¨ pets. It must not have been fun for my other half to have to request this, but here we are, in mid-rollercoaster and there is no way out. More tequila please.

Here is how the waiting game went:

Day 1: Parrot passport ready. Permission to buzz the tower.
Day 2: Continental merged with United. This is not good because, as everyone knows, United sucks.
Day 3: Still here. US Fish and Wildlife SF Designated Port started the long weekend way early and I could't book the exit clearance on a Friday at 2pm. You guys are killing me.
Day 4: Mwah ha hahahaha! We are all mad here.
Day 5: Parrot had five baths by 11am, in three different water bowls (one of which is akin to me bathing in a pyrex dish). He is going to love the desert.
Day 6: Vet, USDA and US Fish and Wildlife cleared Parrolito for export in one day. I own bureaucracy.
Day 7: We are off.

1/11th Bird Life

Today we shipped 400 kg. of life to our new overseas address, in preparation for the imminent move. One of the eleven boxes was filled entirely of birdness, to sum up: small "sunning" bird cage, half a manzanita tree, special organic pellets, toys, chewables, a ton of cuttlebone, and a parrot training DVD that I will never use. What this really means is that our life consists of 1/11th of bird. This is a gross under-estimation.