I have always been prone to excess, at least when it comes to animals. I have five dogs, all rescues, all living inside as family. I feed stray cats , who then inexplicably refuse to leave my front porch and must be trapped and taken to the vets for altering so I will not populate my neighborhood with feral felines.
Then there were the years that I belonged to an iguana rescue group and turned my house into a
green hotel for large unwanted lizards which noone seemed to want to adopt after I rescued them. The last of these misfits recently passed away after being a “foster” iguana in my home for years.
“ Are you married?” you may ask. “And does your husband share your love of all creatures great and small?” The answer is yes, I am married and no, he most definitely thinks I am crazy. However, in his defense I must say that he is unfailingly patient. He has built homemade cages for iguanas that were nicer than the ones sold in stores. He worked one whole hot North Carolina summer day building an outdoor turtle enclosure and carpeting it with centipede sod so that my gentle African tortoises might enjoy thier summers in the sunshine. He rolls his eyes and shares his home semi-graciously with our pack of barking refugees. He draws the line at dogs on the furniture and in the bed, but then marriage is a compromise, right?
I think I may have finally taxed his patience with the birds, however. It started innocently enough with some research on parrots and a purchase of a one year old blue headed pionus along with a pricey cage and an abundance of toys and treats. He good naturedly built an outdoor perch for our screen porch and gave up a corner of the sunroom for her cage. Well, who knew how sweet and cuddly a bird could be? Soon, an English Budgie joined the pionus in the sunroom. Next came an Indian Ringneck who remained untamed and needed a bigger cage since I was unable to excersize him properly. I should have recognized danger lurking in the shadows as I tried to sneak the pieces of the huge cage that had been delivered for the ring neck into the sunroom so I could assemble it there and hope it would blend in. “Is that what UPS brought today?” and “How much was this one?” were among the questions asked. But of course, why should the abandoned cage go to waste? So I added an adorable handfed Quaker parrot to my little bird family. So far, so good, but I had to push my luck and answer an ad in my local paper for a 3 year old Senegal parrot with cage that needed a good home. My husband works out of town part time so this has aided me numerous times in stealthily adding to my menagerie. I ended up purchasing the Senegal and setting him up in the sunroom, which now included five large expensive bird cages and five equally expensive, but gorgeous parrots. The new addition to my flock went unnoticed for several days until one morning as my better half was passing through the sunroom, he was greeted by the newcomer with a soft “Hello?” My husband stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the sunroom and counted the cages out loud by pointing his finger at each one ( a bit dramatically, I might add). His comment? “Why would you want five birds when you already have four?” Why indeed?