Ain't That Sherific?: My baby . . .

The first Christmas Robert and I were married, he bought me a special present. He bought me a cockatiel. We thought for sure it was aboy so we named it Elvis. Elvis turned out to be a girl. She was an awesome bird. Fully flighted and really special. I adored her and it spawned a love of birds for me. I became addicted to birds. We ended up with many different birds over the years, some from bredding, some from rescue. With the birth of the kids we have decreased our flock to 2 birds. (We recently lost our last cockatiel a month or so ago) We have a blue and gold macaw named "Boomer" and an african grey named "Caesar". I have blogged about Caesar and his escapades before when I spoke about the passing of Alex, a famous African Grey.

Boomer is my baby. We brought him home before he was fully weaned, which was a huge mistake. I had to hand-feed him day and night and make sure he was eating and gaining weight. At first I had to feed him through a syringe and then by soaking food and dropping it in his mouth. I was un-godly concerned about him not gaining weight and I had to take him to the vet and weigh him weekly. It was a mess. He is definitely my baby. He does speak. He says, "Shut Up Boomer" and "Dustin! Go to time out" and "Diiinnnnner!" and "That's enough!" and "Robert, I need you!" other wonderful things we say around here constantly. We wanted him to be able to say thank you when he was handed something so every time we gave him a treat, we would say, "Say Thank You Boomer". You guessed it, he now says, "Say Thank You Boomer". Not too bright, but loveable.

I'm not sure he is doing well. He should live to be about 60-80 years old and I think he is about 10 years old. He doesn't seem quite right. Tonight I got him out of the cage and gave him some lovin' and decided to take some photos to share.