Lucy went today for a wing clip. It took just a few minutes and wasn't too traumatic.
Sunday, I perched her on my shoulder and took her outside to see the blooming azaleas and the newly planted tomato seedlings. As we were heading toward the cucumber seedlings she lifted off my shoulder and flew about 200 feet down the lot. She landed in the front yard under a live oak. She didn't have a clue where she was. She could have as easily landed in the street or slammed into a passing vehicle. When I reached to pick her up, she was just looking around. Da dum dum dum.
The street was quiet Sunday, but it isn't always so.
Oh, for goodness' sake. Now we have teenage angst.
When Lucy was a baby, we bought her a short perch and a personal fan heater to dry her after baths. For months now she has jumped down repeatedly during every drying session. I've retrieved her and put her back on the perch, exhorting her to "work" and "stay warm" (paying attention to the temperature so she wasn't overheated).
It was a warm day today, and the house remains warm this evening. Since she was having such an issue with the fan, I just plopped her on a playtree branch to dry.
For half an hour she didn't move. No fluffing, no preening, nothing. So I brought a piece of newspaper and laid it on the counter in the office, as usual, and set up the perch, as usual, and turned the fan to low. Now she's working and preening and doing fine. Hasn't made an effort to jump at all.
I'm with my mother-in-law. It wouldn't have done for me to have a human child.
This post at Possum's leads me to an update on my mother-in-law.
At last writing, she was feeble and incoherent. She underwent a full battery of tests that showed no evidence of a brain tumor or stroke that might account for her condition. Her doctor forbade her to take any more of the sleeping pills that she has used for whatever reason for many past years.
Now she seems to have recovered. We don't have a clue as to what caused such a sharp decline then. She's a little dotty, but from Lyman's reports and my observations that's been true for decades. So our family is off the skids for now.
The window frame-chewing yesterday was of a piece with the strawberry-tossing.
Lyman brought in a half-flat (6 pints) of luscious Louisiana strawberries a couple of days ago. That night I offered Lucy one, and she ate it with gusto. Yesterday I offered her another in the dish of her Parrot Tower. I heard it hit the floor. When I reached up to return it to the dish, she bit my finger and threw it off again.
She didn't do these things as a baby.
Living with a parrot, even if she is the prettiest girl in town, has its drawbacks. Yesterday I turned around to see her chewing on the wooden window frame for the first time. She has lived in the same area for two years and three months without doing that. "No," I said. She took a defensive posture and glared at me, her pupils dilating and retracting, dilating and retracting. She doesn't like to be told "no".
I offered her a popsicle stick as an alternative chew treat. She took it and threw it off the cage, then returned to chewing the window frame. I finally had to move the cage over so she couldn't reach it.
The damage isn't so bad that it can't be handled with a little sandpaper and paint. Lyman gave her a short lecture on not chewing her house down, and we all seem to be on good terms now.
But you should have seen the look in her eye when she heard "No".
I have a strong penchant for Indian food that grew from my stay in New York years ago, where it served as a spicy substitute for the Mexican food I loved in Texas. That yearning has been seldom satisfied since I moved to Vidalia.
So it was a fine treat last night to eat Jordana Adams' recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala. It was rich and richly seasoned, and should lay my grumblings to rest for some while. Thank you, Miss Jordana.
Rough talk from Jack Shafer at Slate about Howell Raines' autobiography:
There's enough self-love in Raines' autobiography to earn it a place in the autoerotica section. By the time Raines stops romancing himself in the public mirror, conjures the last mirage of the glory that could have been, and settles his final grudge, you can only conclude that Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. did readers and Times staffers a service by terminating this vain and cockeyed beast.
(Link via Glenn Reynolds)
I am posting this gift again because it went over so well with Debra Johnson in Mandeville. Her visitors want one, too.
Funny, the things that set you off. I am reading Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage. Early in, she mentions a roll of cotton wrapped in blue paper. The setting for the beginning of the novel is WWII, but I remember a roll of cotton in 1960. It was in a box with a red cross, about the size of a pound of butter. Johnson & Johnson, I think. I have cotton and synthetic balls in my bathroom vanity. Can you buy a roll of cotton now? I'll have to visit Reed's Pharmacy to find out.
Sugar, the red mare, is swiftly becoming a memory. That only took three days -- not so bad, since I'm not nearly as young as Mac Thomason.
I am, ah, still feeling the horseback ride. When I first stepped onto the ground in the stable yard after dismounting I could not walk. I looked down at the steaming urine and muck on the ground and told myself "Janis, do not fall. It's a long ride back to town. Stand up straight." After a few minutes in place I was able to step gingerly out of the enclosure. Yard work here can wait a day or two.
Like so many travelers, I must have picked some sinus thing or cold up on an airplane.
On Saturday we went horseback riding. I'd like to tell you we have pictures, but I was too busy trying to sit Sugar's saddle.
