Operation Desert Dove

How about his full name and address. Apparently this got Mr. Yosuke Nakamura Japanese parrot extraordinaire back home safe and sound. Amazing little grey geniuses.  

And to think all Ty, my grey can do on cue is the security alarm….

Aw the wonders of positive reinforcement. If you can teach your fish to limbo, imagine the things you could train your falcon or better yet, your dog!

Pluvi’s post of the great BBC video appropriate for April Fool’s day, made me think of this video.

A sadder video, perhaps, but I love it.

And untouchable, for now.  (also not my photograph. Obviously that of a professional!)

It wasn’t my plan to have a “real” job again, but I found myself back in the world of nonprofit. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re going to have a real job, you can’t beat mine. I’m giving back. I’m shaping the young women of the future (if I’m lucky). I’m surrounded by Girl Scout cookies and looking for ways to fund a bunch of programs I would have loved to do when I was young. Robotics Camp???  Girl Scouts is awesome. You have come a long way, baby.

All the same, an office doesn’t suit me. It’s like the lack of sunshine ebbs the shine out of my eyes. I don’t smile when I can’t glance up into the sky and catch some treasure floating by so I can imagine the bliss. I feel dumpy. Fat. Plain. And you are what you feel. I had been thinking that this was the fate of turning 37, to be matronly, to be stern, to be completely unnoticed. Then tonight I decided to go for a walk.

It isn’t like the hundred year spring we had the year Jolie came to live with me, but it’s really green this year. I thought I should walk up to the bench, the place where my 1920s neighborhood meets the wilderness and smell the sage. I was feeling brain tired and achy in the face like there had been too much frowning. I needed to see open sky, I needed my thighs to ache with the effort of climbing toward something worth seeing.

The great thing about my mountain pass town is that nearly every bird that crosses from the Sonoran Desert to the Ocean has to pass over my little city and in a good storm, a few find their way through accidentally as well. –Like the sucklei that sent my pigeons tumbling into the loft a few weeks ago. You know, I’ve never seen a black merlin before? I know now why they call merlins pigeon hawks. She struck a rare terror in those pudgy white racers. (She struck a rare terror in me too. I thought soemone had set my black-capped peregrine loose from his moult) She was a captivating surprise, a story, and the chance of such a vision is what makes a walk worth while in March.  

I didn’t see much — the turkey vultures that migrate through once a year, a rufous hummingbird, many crows and the starlings are back. I saw a Steller’s jay and a goldfinch. The red queen was out for a soar, likely not hungry. I followed a trail of black feathers in my yard to her perch in a pine where she feasted on crow the other day. (don’t tell me a redtail can’t catch anything it wants) I took it as a good time to let my pigeons out. She wasn’t doing anything intriguing tonight, though. I didn’t see anything unusual, but the usual suspects were plenty. I felt, well, full.

Funny thing was, I wasn’t invisible anymore. Three cars passed with a driver I didn’t know and all three people smiled and waved. A cop car slowed to ask me if I was lost. I pointed down the hill. “No, I’m pretty sure I live down there,” I said, but laughed. Policemen have a funny way of saying “Hey, how you doing? Isn’t this a great night to be driving with your windows down…to be walking?”

I walked home and thought, I don’t belong in an office. I belong out here where I’m pretty, where I’m a part of so much that is gorgeous. I think we all do.

I hope you’re all getting out for walk.  

Thank God for the happy-go-lucky boy dog. As if this team didn’t have enough intensity already…  (but this IS serious business, you know.)

I dreamt last night that I had a tiercel kestrel, a bird small enough to take to work with me, pretty enough to be art. A bird I could fly every day if I could carve out a half an hour.

Hell, why not. Those kestrels should be starting a nest in my neighbor’s pine any day now… and there’s two more spots on my license…

Oopsy. I’ve missed a call to meme…

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people
“But I want to get marrried. I’m tired of living in the co-op. And if I can’t have a baby, I want a cat.”

 Hmmmn. I find that very disturbing. 

I’m going to abstain from the spreading this meme, but only because it has already infiltrated the vast majority of my companions.

Thanks Pluvi.

Or not quite…the birds are actually weathering on the roof.

 Staff at a Melbourne landmark have resorted to unusual methods to try to prevent damage to their building - a wedge-tailed eagle called Zorro. They hope Zorro’s presence on the roof of the city’s Arts Centre will scare away white cockatoos that have been attacking its iconic tower. RTWT

How long before the parrots figure out that the falcon and wedge-tail are no danger? They are a wee bit better at problem solving than seagulls at landfills after all…

Need I say more?