Augusta Oelschig's Old City Market, Savannah (1975)

Alive, it is alive!

Yes sports fans... Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. 

A Hobo Nickel, by the way. 

unruly helpmeet: screw you, rainbow fish

unruly helpmeet: screw you, rainbow fish

The Tabbouleh Song

3 things you should know...

Part 2 - What's in a name?

Well Folks,
After a rather difficult process of elimination, the new Bolivian Military Macaw (hereafter to be briefly referred to as BMM) has a new name. Firstly a little back story;
A year or so ago when the ladywife mentioned wanting to get "back into" birds I didn't exactly picture anything much different than what we have in the household now. The start was slow, a day and a half after saying this, we had gone down to Jacksonville and purchased three Parrotlets. After spending a couple of times the cost of the birds outfitting cages for their lifelong happiness my spouse did something not expected. On a food run to PetSmarCo-Mart she came home with a Cockatiel. It had to come home, it was being abused by the other birds at the store... I wasn't exactly thrilled at this development, but the bird grew on me as it learned to wolf-whistle... I however thought that something needed to be done. If I wasn't careful we'd have a pet store of our own in short order that would make the movie "the birds" look rather tame.
"Hon," I queried, "why don't we look into larger birds?" I figured at the time we would have built a bird stockpile of various species until we had Big Bird himself, so why not short the circuits and get the big bird sooner and skip all the rest? Although a good idea, it didn't exactly pan out like I thought it would. Within a week or so we had made a road trip to Florida again and taken on the parenting responsibilities for a Blue and Gold macaw who we soon named Mozart.
Mozart was a joy to raise and learn about. Everything from "use a paper towel with a slot torn into it as a bib" to "Wow, I didn't know they could climb bathroom cabinets like that" as we had converted one of the baths into a nursery.
Well Mozart needed a friend and within two months we made a trip to St. Augustine Florida and attended a “small” bird show… (Folks please use caution, if you don’t want to come home with a bird that has stolen your heart and jump seated with you in your favorite ride, don’t go to the “small” show at St. Augustine) With a list of possible friend species as we arrived, we instead were shanghaied by a Scarlet Macaw chick… Roxie.
Being a very downy chick I’m thinking something like six weeks old, Roxie was something else… Mozart who was almost weaned from being syringe fed regressed and proceeded to enjoy weeks upon weeks more of un-needed baby food as Roxie was put on a feeding schedule that fit well with our never sleeping habits at home.
Fast forward to a few months ago and another innocent trip to St. Augustine was called for… (Did I mention don’t go to St. Augustine unless you’re ready to bring home a bird?)
We came home with Ju-ju, a two year old Military Macaw that we made an offer on and the counter offer was a steal of a bargain…
To say he was practically a give away would have been an understatement… Knowing the price was too good, we recognized that he’d have issues. (He does, handling, but we’re working on it.)
And then of course two or three weeks ago we went back to St. Augustine. (Note St. Augustine must be the seat of an evil plot to populate Georgia with large birds…) In the words of Brittany Spears, “Oooops I did it again…”, make that we did it again. Noah must have used some South American ninja skills on the wife as we loaded up and brought the little guy home. Now you need to know I wasn’t an innocent in the placing of Noah into our ark, I do feel that if had had the strength to have put my foot down, the ladywife would have acquiesced. I though had fallen under the little bird’s spell as well…
Naming Noah proved to have been a very difficult nine days… At some point he must have thought his came was “Commere” as that was what we were always saying to him as we played the wife pointed out a few days into the challenge. But Noah he is. Greatest Zookeeper of all time, Shipbuilder, Sea Captain, and a plethora of other things… It fits.
And that is a good thing.

-Rob "make mine a Macaw" D.

What's in a name?

Well Folks,
The Bolivian Military Macaw (BMM) has a name.
Noah.
I think it says it all, although I am sure a much longer post extolling the back story will be along soon.
-Rob "that's it for now" D.