I surrender!

It's winter. It's snowing. Again. I'm trapped in front of my computer with four bored dogs, a cockatoo that is compulsively shredding my new phone book, a parrot who is throwing hot peppers at the dogs like a prince throwing pennies to the peasants, and which the dimwitted dogs are by turns, eating and spitting them across the floor, while I wait for spring. I know. It's gonna be a while. Why oh why do i live in the northeast? I'm not a snow person, i don't ski, sled, halfpipe, ice skate, throw snowballs, or even scrape the ice from my windshield, preferring to let the defrosters do the dirty work. Winter is something to be endured, like a bad stomach ache, until it's over. I do make chocolate chip cookies and eat them. And I drink lots of coffee, so that the effect of the caffeine is to make everything feel like it's whizzing by, giving me the impression that winter is passing so much more quickly. Not a great strategy, but one does what one can to cope. Gotta make more cookies.
eat and be warm,
judy

Congratulations to us all

Today is Inauguration Day and it was glorious. Today is the day that America finally grew up, showing the rest of the world that we can see past race and choose a president based on his intelligence, his strength of character and a platform that supports a unified people. Hopefully, we will see scientific fields flourish once again, companies using a domestic workforce and our economy stagger back onto its feet. Bringing our troops safely back home wouldn't be such a bad idea, either.
I am very proud of us all.

Meet the Staff

I like to joke that i have an office staff of two working for me. They work for peanuts of course, since my secretary is my African Grey Parrot, Tallulah Belle, and my research consultant is my Moluccan Cockatoo named Samantha.
There is something weird about naming parrots. Tallulah is a boy, and it may seem strange that he has a girly name but trust me, this is almost standard issue with parrot owners. It seems that we name our new pets as soon as we get them, and then, after a while, curiosity gets the better of us and we take our birdies in for a DNA test and lo and behold, find out we've switched the sexes. We could have sworn that Tallulah was a girl, for no good reason other than we wanted a girl, and so my husband had named him when he was about two months old. The test came back and we were shocked, shocked, shocked that we had misrepresented him, and possibly created a sexual identity crisis for life. Until we joined our local parrot club and met several other misnamed birds. African Greys are particularly hard to distinguish between the sexes - for humans, anyway - I'm sure the birds have absolutely no problem out there in the wild where the favorite pick up line goes something like "So, do you fly around these parts often?" But we've met an Emma (male), Fred (girl), and Peabody (girl). (By the way, ours isn't wild caught, he's captive bred, we absolutely believe in letting the wild fly free - more on that some other day.)
Samantha, our cockatoo, is very girly, though her former owner swore she was a boy because she had a "male energy" and had named her Billy. I know Billy could be boy or girl and she was just hedging her bets, but we got smart and gave her the DNA test before we named her. One point for us.
And so the two of them work for me. Tallulah perfectly imitates the ring of my phone, and even answers it with "Hello? Yeah? I'm doing fine, yeah, yeah, okay, here's Judy." all with the proper pauses. Then he leans over the side of his cage and calls me over with "Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy" until I thank him by paying him with one of his favorite pine nuts.
Samantha is a little more complicated. Her species is known for being a "velcro" bird, which means she loves to be held, and will emit bloodcurdling, earsplitting, heartstopping shrieks if you put her back on her perch for even half a minute. Because of this, i find myself usually writing with a cockatoo on my lap, her head pressed against my chest, practically cooing with happiness while i try to type over and around her plump little feathered body. Lunchtime simply means i share my lunch with her, she will consent to sit on her tabletop perch in the kitchen and graciously share whatever i'm eating at the moment. Favorites include scrambled eggs, corn muffins, french toast, meatballs, and radishes. I hate radishes, and she can have them all, as far as I'm concerned. The good thing is that her bedtime is at seven, mine is at eight and i get a whole hour to myself before i put my head under my wing and get to sleep.
fly free!
judy

It's A New Year, Can I Start A New Habit?

You're looking at my New Year's Resolution.

After half a bottle of limoncello, i expansively vowed to everyone celebrating New Year's Eve with me (which would include my daughter, my husband, one friend, a cockatoo, four dogs and a sleepy African Grey Parrot) that i would faithfully get this blog off its rear end and be entertaining and witty and whatever.
I have a headache this morning.
But a vow is a vow.

Question: Am I the only one who has to eat a piece of herring to start the new year? I think it's an old German custom, my family has always done it, but it could just be another peculiarity in a family known for a lot of them. And we eat hoppin' John on new year's day. Now, i know that's a southern custom, Louisiana, or thereabouts, and since i was born in Alabama, it's close enough. I like hoppin' John.
Herring and limoncello does not mix.
My second vow is to remember that next year.
wishing all of you jobs, prosperity, good health and better food choices.
judy

Is It Enough Yet?

You probably saw it. How do you feel about it? Can you even stand to look at the video, knowing she was five lengths, four lengths, two lengths from death? A beautiful young race mare running her heart out for her owners, coming in second against a magnificently strong male contender and dying for it. It happened to Ruffian, but that wasn't enough. It happened to Barbaro, although he was a male, he died for the "sport". It happens at race tracks all over the country, young horses pushed past their limit, too young for their bodies to carry the burden of speed, and snapping bones, bursting arteries, and becoming young cripples or slaughter house prospects. Yeah, the slaughter house. Do some research and find out how many top race horses, Kentucky Derby Winners, wound up falling through the cracks and landing in slaughter houses.

Maybe I should call this post "Why I don't Watch The Kentucky Derby". Horse lovers have known since horse racing became big business, that it's cruel to saddle "break" and start training a yearling horse for the races. That it's only done so that the multimillionaire investors can get quick returns on their money. They pay huge amounts for these race horses, and insure them to the max, then send them off to the trainers to push them into performing way too young. I won't go into a rant, you've heard it all before. These horses can be allowed to mature and then raced, it just takes about two more years. So take this away with you, if you are a big race horse fan, or you've partied and watched the Derby, Eight Belles died for you, too.

Good-bye Jean-Luc

Nah, don't get all teary eyed. I did it for love.
I gave away my beloved one year old Boston terrier (with maybe a pit bull grandmother?).
To the best home in the world.
This is what happened. I had rescued him from a back yard breeder. Jean-Luc was in desperate straits. He was malnourished, wormy, full of giardia, crypto-something or other, had a broken tail, a fractured cheek bone, and a few other problems, since the "breeder's" nineteen year old tatooed, purple mohawked son was using him as a live football. We fed him, paid for several restorative operations, neutered him, loved him, vitaminized him, and eventually brought him to full and totally vibrant good health. The problem was that he grew to fifty pounds (pit bull genes always out themselves) and was extremely - er- exuberant. The other problem was that we have two tiny full grown shih tzus that weighed about three pounds each, and were getting unceremoniously flipped through the air on a daily basis. Or squashed when he playfully pounced on them. There was much whimpering, limping, and soulful looks from the little ones. It wasn't that Jean-luc wasn't gentle, they could take food right out of his mouth, it was that he wanted to play with them so badly,which meant picking them up by their heads and carrying them around like they were one of his stuffed toys, or body slamming them against a wall as he ran in from the back yard. I was terrified that one day i would hear a fateful crunch and that would be the end of one of my little fluff balls.
So, my dearest friend Kay, offered to take him. She lives on a huge horse/cow farm and has three delightful kids, and two other dogs who are big, and lots of room for him to run his brains out. And as a bonus, is a dog groomer by profession, so is used to handling anything. He is quite happy there. Her kids adore him, and he sleeps on their beds, he eats calf poop and barfs it up in my friend's kitchen, he sits on her kitchen table and watches the world go by, and in general, is having a great life. Which makes me happy. Except that i miss him like crazy.
I guess sometimes we're just meant to be the intermediary, not the final destination.
Did i say i still miss him?
And if i should ever run across a petite Boston terrier, who looks like him.....well.....

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

I didn't want this blog to get political, as I'm a pretty tolerant person and advocate freedom of speech, thought, expression and chocolate, but sometimes we have to put down our candybars and take a stand.
Here's mine.
Boycott the Beijing Olympics.
It is a miserabe truth that the Chinese government is brutal and indifferent to the severe animal abuse that goes on within its borders. Animals suffer indescribably horrible deaths for the sheer entertainment of it (can you believe) and for the twisted tastes of their food industry. I don't want to go into detail here, because you won't sleep at night, but if you are interested, you can follow this link http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/395884823 and add your name to a petition that is trying to address these issues.
It's so important.
If you love animals, do it for them. Take humanity one baby step forward.
Thanks.
Judy