Midway Through A Bad Week

     I’ve lived my life being told that animals don’t think or have feelings.  They work completely off instinct.  Having grown up that way I firmly believe that line of thinking is utter bullshit.

     Last night I had Zoey (who, it turns out, is a Timneh) on my arm and I wanted to get her onto her cage.  She’s got a large perch on top of her cage.  Zoey, by the way, hates not being on me and will resist any time I try and get her to step down.  Unless she’s hungry or thirsty or tired.

     So I held my arm out so she was behind her perch.  I held my arm so that for her to move closer to me, she would have to step up onto her perch and then I could get my arm away before she could get back on it.  It was a good plan.

     Or it would have been a good plan had Zoey cooperated.  What she did was stand on my wrist and look around to see if she could get back to my shoulder without losing contact with my arm.  She would try and go a certain route, but once she realized that both her feet would be off my arm, she would stop and back up.  She did that several times.

     Finally, she used her beak to grab onto the very edge of the perch and edged her body around it.  This was a route she had thought about a few times but didn’t go through with.  Probably because of the angle her body would have to be at.  But she finally realized that she had no other way of getting to my shoulder without leaving my arm entirely.  To me, that shows quite a bit of problem solving and analytical skill.

     And anyone that says animals don’t have feelings never had a parrot sit with her back to them saying, “Peek-a-boo” in a very soft, sad voice.

     The kids have been dropped off to camp.  Sadly, the SUV died sometime while we were gone.  That makes life just a little bit more difficult.  So now I have to rent a Volkswagon Jetta to get around. 

     Actually, it’s not a bad car.  It’s no Viper, but it does move when you want it to move. 

     Since I have a camera, we decided (on the way back from Denton) to take a boatload of pictures of the racetrack.  I didn’t have any real reason for doing so, but it seemed like a good idea.

     It was nearly deserted there.  I guess that’s not a big surprise when there’s no race going on.

     But now I can say that I was there.  Ha!

     Anyway, if I can get things working right, there’ll be more pictures at the GoE-Gallery.