My New Friend

So growing up, actually more like for as long as I can remember growing up, we had a bird. A beautiful cockatiel. His name was Mister Bird. If I remember the story right he was outside one day starving and singing a song. Dad heard him and went in and got some food and flew down into Dad's hands to eat. He became our bird. He would always try to peck at us when we fed him or changed the paper on the bottom of the cage but he always was much happier after it was all over with. He had a mirror that hung in the cage and he hated it when you took that out to clean it. I think he either had a huge ego and liked to look at himself or had no clue that it was himself he was looking at and thought he had a friend.


(This isn't Mr. Bird just a good picture I found that looks like him. I can't believe that we never had a up close picture taken of him.)

Anyway Mr. Bird died when I was probably 18 or 19. Like I said I think my family had him longer than they had me and we have no idea how old he was when Dad found him. So one day I was at a swap meet with a friend of mine and bought Petey. Again I never took any pictures of Petey. Petey was a love bird. I brought him home and fixed up the cage. One Summer Grandma and Grandpa Garlick said that they would babysit Petey while I went on vacation with Mom and Dad. When I got home, Petey had a new name and it was inscribed on the cage thanks to Grandpa. "Petey Turd Burger". I let Petey out in my room a few times. I would forget to turn off the ceiling fan and we had a couple of oops's but he survived.


Petey died a few years after Grandpa died. I think he missed having him babysit and talk to him. Speaking of Grandpa, he had a few new friends of his own in his backyard. Blue Jays. Grandpa would be out in the garage and the blue jays would fly to the rain gutters and call to him. Grandpa would whistle and grab some peanuts and the blue jays would fly down to his hands and eat the peanuts from him. When I moved into their house, I told Michael about it, and well he didn't seem to excited about it but they never showed up. About the 2nd year, one showed up for a day or two and then was gone. Turns out the dogs next door would catch them and eat them - so no blue Jays for us, or should I say me, to play with. I had an Aunt who was deathly afraid of anything with feathers and we would tease her to death. She refused to sleep in my room when Petey was alive because of the bird in there. I didn't know my husband had a fear of birds until a few days ago...because the blue jay is back!!!


You can see the top of Michael's head. He froze like a giant statue. He says that the bird can see the whites of his eyes and will peck them out. We can thank his brother Chris for telling him that little white lie. But other than running like a little school girl back to the man cave he didn't want to have anything to do with Mr Blue Jay until Saturday when he was outside watering the garden. I guess Mr. Blue Jay wanted some food and didn't want to wait for me to show up and convinced Michael to get some stuffing mix out of the cupboard and feed him. Michael even went and got a bird bath from the other side of the house to make sure he had some water to drink too. I don't think he's too afraid of him now. So enjoy some of these pictures I took of him. He's very demanding now.









He got brave on Saturday and flew down to my hand, but at the last possible second he decided not to land. I'll work with him more on that. That would be an amazing picture, but the next couple are just amazing as well.









I think my new name should be the bird whisper. He sorta sometimes comes when I call him, just like any other pet I've had.