The Menagerie Archive

On Monday night I put the dishes in the dishwasher and turned it on about an hour before bedtime. I went upstairs to chat online and mess around with my blog a little. As part of the ‘getting ready for bed’ routine Kurt put squeaky pants (Gandalf) in his room and closed the door like we do every night. Minutes later I started to smell smoke. It smelled a little like burning rubber. I went downstairs thinking I left the stove or oven on, but didn’t see any lights on. I went back upstairs, but still smelled something. I went downstairs again and this time looked inside the dishwasher, which was on the heat dry cycle. I called up to Kurt, “I think we need a new dishwasher!”

“Why?”

“Cause this one is smoking.” I said. Then the fumes hit me and smoke just started pouring out of it. I turned off the dishwasher, closed the dishwasher door, ran upstairs and put a towel in front of Gandalf’s door. Kurt asked what’s wrong and I said, “The dishwasher has smoke pouring out of it.” I never use the heat dry cycle, as a matter a fact even though I typically have it set on air dry I usually turn off the dishwasher when it gets to the dry cycle.

Kurt and I opened the door again and pulled out a nylon/plastic cooking spoon that had slipped through a hole in the lower wash rack. The rubber handle of the spoon was resting right on the heating element. I opened all the downstairs windows and stayed up till about one o’clock in the morning. At midnight I think the smell was pretty much gone and I checked in on Gandalf. He WAS sleeping peacefully. He was a little miffed at me for waking him up, but he was ok. I still didn’t sleep very well that night and my throat hurt this morning. My nasal passages felt like they were burning (filled with smoke) all day.

It’s so funny to watch Gandalf run across the top of his cage and attack paper. I usually give him my junk mail to destroy and he loves to punch holes and shred it. He’s an extremely expensive paper shredder, but he’s very thorough. The other day I gave him a Drs. Foster & Smith catalog that I had finished looking at. He had so much fun dragging it around the top of the cage and attacking it. At one point he was standing on the edge of his cage with catalog open and him shredding one page. Suddenly the catalog slid over the edge of the cage and Gandalf, who apparently weights less than the catalog, was still holding onto one end and plummeted to the floor still grasping the catalog. He was fine other than a slightly bruised ego. Gandalf popped up and was very alert – looking to see who may have witnessed his embarrassing moment.

We’ve had a couple of cold snaps in the past few months. The first one caused about a foot of snow and I was out of power for two hours, which isn’t too bad. The foot of snow wasn’t even that bad, but then again I’m originally from Alaska. After the cold snap it warmed up a rained for a solid couple of weeks and then we had high wind storms. And let me tell you soggy ground + strong winds = a ton of tress just falling over. Some people were out of power for a full week (mine only flickered a bit). Just a few days ago we had another cold snap plus strong winds but only three inches of snow. My power went out for twelve hours (that was a cold night). And the gate to our fence fell, posts and all. If our power had stayed out any longer I would have taken Gandalf to stay with my parents or found some other friend that still had power. My malamute, despite his arthritis, still loves the cold and had a ton of fun in the snow.

Gandalf actually has two names and both originated before I even knew from which breeder I would be getting my baby. I chose Gandalf for my grey from the wizard in The Lord of the Rings books. The movies had not come out yet, but the first one was released a month before I brought Gandalf home. I thought I was being all cleaver with the name but when the breeder I chose asked me what name I was going to give him she just chuckled and told me it was pretty common.

Gandalf’s other name is Micken. We use Micken as a nickname and is more of a description of the type of animal to which he belongs (we call crows Mickens as well). So the story goes – One day my boyfriend and I were trying to decide what to eat for dinner and the choices were narrowed down to two things, Meatloaf or a chicken dish he makes with cream of mushroom soup and shoe string potatoes. We couldn’t agree on which to make, so he jokingly came up the idea of making the chicken and stuffing the meatloaf with it. He called this ingenious idea – Micken loaf. Months after bringing Gandalf home we had the same “what’s for dinner” dilemma and in the course of deciding what to eat my boyfriend pointed out the Gandalf was a “fat little Micken”. The nickname stuck and we use it on all waddling birds that are not chickens. Gandalf thinks it’s funny because he has the same twisted sense of humor that we do and he’ll say his nickname several times quickly – Micken Micken Micken!

I’m so happy I found a new way to bathe Gandalf that he actually enjoys! I bought the 10-ounce Tropical Mist Fine Mist Bird Bath from www.drsfostersmith.com. I was so ready for him to be scared and frantically flap around the bathroom when I started spraying, but amazingly, he started dancing around and fluffing his feathers. I just put him on a perch in the shower and held the sprayer about a foot over his head. In the past, I tried a regular spray bottle, large dish of water, and just taking him in the shower with me. Even the regular spray bottle was not a fine enough mist for him and it tired my hand out trying to get him wet. He wouldn’t even go near the large dish of water, and going in the shower he just loathed. He is sitting on his perch next to me right now and I can tell he is just pleased to have had a happy bath time for once!

As far as TV goes I think Gandalf could take it or leave it, but he does like the Vontage commercials with one of the songs from the Kill Bill all-girl Japanese surf-rock band – woo hoo woo hoo hoo. He even sings is during the commercial and uses it to get our attention when he wants out of his cage. He also likes to dance to the theme song from Penn and Teller’s Showtime show.

He also perks up when he hears bird sounds from the TV, and especially jumps to attention when he hears the sound of a hawk.

Anytime my dogs start a howling chorus that goes on too long or barking fest I tap on whatever window I’m near, open it, and tell them to “knock it off”. Well on Halloween I just stayed home and handed out candy to the kids. Most of them teens that didn’t even bother to dress up. - When the first or second group of kids came by and knocked on the door Gandalf told them, “knock it off!” He’s so rude. I don’t have a clue where he gets it from.

My friends all understand that my pets are my children most of them are ok with the furry ones but are put off by the feathered one. Most of them think Gandalf is cool but don’t want to hold him and get nervous anytime he flaps his wings. That’s fine with me because I know if they ever wanted to pet him they would ask first.

The one thing that annoys me is that if Gandalf doesn’t answer their hello’s they just keep repeating the same word over and over as if he simply didn’t hear them the first twenty times. He does have ears and they work just fine! If he couldn’t hear he wouldn’t be able to reproduce the exact same sound the smoke detector makes when Kurt is done cooking. Worse, people whistle to Gandalf and then once they leave all Gandalf will do is whistle and it drives me nuts!

I loved cats when I was little. I didn’t just love ‘em I was obsessed. – I know, that’s so hard to believe. I had no interest nor had ever thought of having any type of animal other than cats. The dog we had was an outdoor only pet, so he wasn’t a close part of the family. To me cats were the only animals that were perfect companions - cuddly, human like and intelligent.

When I was ten we had to move to a new city and of course, I didn’t want to leave the only place I had ever known with all my friends so as a bribe my mom said that when we moved I could have a cockatiel. I didn’t even know a cockatiel was a bird! I didn’t consider it much of a bribe at the time because the only birds I had known were wild birds that just flew around and sung the same songs all the time. I mean what kind of companion is that! My mom told me that they could be taught to talk and one of my uncles told me about cockatiels that could do tricks and all that jazz. I wasn’t convinced, but when we finally moved I wasted no time dragging my dad to the pet store to retrieve my bribe.

I picked a baby Lutino Cockatiel. I think there were four Lutino Cockatiels at the pet store, but I knew exactly which one I wanted. I named him Dino after the Dinosaur pet on the Flintstones and quickly fell in love with him. That bird loved baths and it was hilarious to watch him bathe in just about anything. We would let him run around the dinner table eating from our plates. One time we were eating Menudo (not the music group – it’s a Mexican soup) and he jumped right in and started to take a bath. The way my mom makes the soup the broth has a red color from chilies and tomatoes so my poor Lutino had stained feathers for quite a while.

Dino died after three years because we didn’t know that carbonated drinks and alcohol were bad for birds and my parents often gave Dino sips of beer. After Dino we had a few other cockatiels and parakeets. We also saved two canary-winged parakeets from a pet store that closed down. No one was feeding the animals so they practically gave them away. One of them died shortly after we got them, but none of those birds were as special to me as Dino.

Weekdays I get up at 6:30 and bring in Gandalf’s breakfast. Though sometimes start the morning by bring him into the bathroom with me to get a steam bath and sometimes I actually make him take a shower (he hates water), then give him breakfast. Either way I’m out the door by about 7am and I usually return around 4:30.

The first person home either lets Gandalf out to play on top of his cage or puts him on his stand to whatever other room they’re going to be in. We don’t have an set amount of cuddling per day or anything we just take him to whatever room we’re in provided that if I’m in the kitchen I’m not cooking, or if Kurt is in the garage he isn’t painting something, etc. When we watch tv we “dance” to our favorite theme songs (Penn & Teller’s show) and sing along with the Vontage commercials (woo who woo who who). Gandalf gets dinner when we eat. Sometimes, depending on what I cook he eats the same thing we do. Gandalf usually takes longer to eat than we do, mostly because he must make sure to toss everything out of his bowl and then waddle around taking bites of the scattered food.

Weekends are a completely different story. We don’t cover Gandalf’s cage so he wakes up with the sun. In the winter that’s not so bad, but in the summer it’s a pain in the ass. He starts by making pleasant sounds cooing and talking, but sometimes we just don’t get up early enough for the darling pile of feathers so he starts to make the smoke alarm sound (also known as the dinner bell when my boyfriend is cooking). At that point, he’s kind of hard to ignore so we feed him and depending on how late were we up the night before we may try to sleep for another hour. On the weekends it really depends on what we’re doing - We may spend the whole day with Gandalf out of the cage, he might get to go for a ride with us somewhere, or he may have to stay in his cage for the day.