Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Bird brain

I was housesitting for a client whose house, yard, and street looked suspiciously like Florida.  It was also hot and humid outside, like Florida.  The house had glass walls, so I could see police and animal control cars speeding down the alley behind the house.  My friend (I don't know who it was, and possibly wasn't anyone from real life, since they were always to one side or behind me) and I got into an old, beat up, white pickup truck from the 30s or 40s and tried to follow the cars down the alley to see where they were going.  I guess we had a CB radio in the truck, because we could hear them talking about chasing down a hoarder who was avoiding being arrested.  We followed them down the alley, which turned into a dirt country road, for a long time, until finally we pulled off the road by a large, empty field.  Next to the field was a stone building that I thought was a church.  
This church looks almost exactly like the one in my dream.
We could see the police cars as well as the hoarder's van parked in front of the building, so we went inside.  It turned out to be a Buddhist temple that looked remarkably like an old, stone Catholic church, and there was a yoga retreat going on inside, so it was packed full of people.  The hoarder was hiding in the crowds of yogis, who were inexplicably milling around instead of doing yoga.  Many of the yoga teachers from Yoga Yoga were there, but I was trying to avoid being seen by them because I didn't want to attract attention to myself by having conversations with them.  As much as I tried, however, Chris P saw me and called out to me from across the room.  Fortunately, right as he did so, the police found the hoarder and arrested him.

My friend and I walked back to the truck and started to head back to my client's house.  As we drove away, though, I noticed an egg on the side of the road, and somehow knew that it was a parrot's egg that the hoarder had dropped as he fled.  I stopped, picked it up, and to my astonishment realized that it was somehow still viable.  As we drove back, we saw and picked up several of these magically viable and unharmed eggs.

When we got back to my client's house, I carefully inspected all the eggs, and somehow was able to determine that I had some African Greys, Macaws, Eclectus, and a couple of Keel-Billed Toucan eggs.


I decided to hand raise the babies myself and find homes for them, but as soon as the Toucans hatched, I realized that I didn't know how to hand raise baby Toucans, since they are frugivores instead of herbivores like the Psittacine species.  I quickly visited avianavenue.com and asked how I should feed these babies, and was advised to make smoothies out of as many fruits as possible and feed that instead of hand feeding formula.  Of course!  Fruit smoothies!  Duh!  The little baby Toucans were so cute, and figuring out how to feed them with their gigantic beaks was a riotous mess.

I mean, how can you deny the cuteness???
As I raised the babies, I got super attached to the Toucans and didn't want to find homes for them.  I was really upset because I didn't have space for them in my house, but right as they were reaching weaning age, my landlord told me that he had finished turning the garage into a bird room.  I was so excited because I could turn the garage into a Toucan habitat!  Hooray!  I got to keep the babies!

Oh, dreams.  Your tidy little happy endings are so cute and completely unrealistic.  You make waking up so difficult sometimes!

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