Older and Better with Shelly

The news is in. Our cockatiel Winston is a girl. But we hate the name “Winnie” and, since she has not objected, we’re still calling her Winston. Winston went in for a spa day. What is a spa day for a cockatiel? Let me tell you it’s getting her wings clipped so she doesn’t crash into mirrors, windows and walls, and break her neck. There are pros and cons about clipping the wings of birds. Nasty arguments. The same about getting your cats declawed. I don’t think a bird with clipped wings will have behavior problems like they say cats will. And if they do they will deal with it. It’s better than yours truly having a nervous breakdown over it. After watching Winston fly around the house, hitting everything in sight and then disappearing one evening, my old heart had it. She was at the top of our dining room buffet about 2 inches from the ceiling watching us run around the house calling for her. She went into house arrest immediately and was kept there until she had he...

So our beloved cockatiel died a few months ago at age 26. In the words of my son, our bird had a good West County life. However, my husband began missing his little friend. He was the only one in the house that actually listened to him and talked back. We have three cats so we really weren’t planning on acquiring another two-winged friend. But the house was so quiet. We missed his chirping.   Our bird was always happy to see us.   He loved it when we came home from shopping or dinner with friends. He could hear us pulling into the driveway and would start chirping before we even got our car into the garage. Unlike our kids, he always was welcoming to his parents. We enjoyed him so much that we decided to get another one, a cockatiel. So we decided to visit a pet shop. A friend had given us our first bird, so going through a pet store would be a whole new experience. After doing some research we found a shop that sold all sorts of birds. They...