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Little. Yellow. Different. Fluffy.  |
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| Cassie
needs her nails clipped.
(Wow. I bet I lost 75% of readers with that first sentence. That’s one hell of a dull first sentence. Let me try to recapture my readership with the second one…) I fuck raccoons. There, that’s better. (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But really, my bird needs her nails clipped. I noticed this a couple of days ago, that her back nails are starting to curl around. For those of you who are not well versed in the lore of the Parakeet, this is a bad thing. Birds are on their feet for their entire lives, and curly toenails can dig uncomfortably and make them unhappy. Since I’m a good, responsible pet owner, I decided that something must be done. Before I go into that, I would like to talk about responsible pet owning. I really get livid when people are irresponsible with their pets. Most housepets are relatively helpless, and count on you for everything. If you neglect them, or don’t do enough to make their lives happy, you will have a miserable, unhealthy animal and you will be a bad, bad person. That’s right. BAD. I will not hesitate to pass judgement on you if you are mean to an animal. Matt is not very responsible about Bob the snake, I’m sorry to say. I was against the acquisition of Bob from the first for this very reason… I had a feeling that Matt wouldn’t be able to devote the necessary energy to perk Bob up. Bob started out unhappy and sullen, because Matthew had neglected him for quite a while. I guess Matt made some effort to cheer Bob up, but when it didn’t work, he mostly gave up. (Admittedly, Bob is a seven foot boa constrictor. You can’t exactly pick him up and play with him anytime you want—it IS a huge production. Plus there was that time he escaped and got stuck in the couch...) Nowadays, Bob frustrates Matt by refusing to eat when he is fed. (Feeding him is also a gigantic hassle.) But Matt perpetuates the cycle by largely ignoring Bob… I feel really sorry for that snake. Matt realizes he’s in over his head and wants to get rid of Bob. I hope he gets around to it sooner rather than later. But there’s also the Cassie Incident. I feed Cassie every day, usually, or every other day at the very least. While I was gone, Matt fed her maybe twice. I left a fat, fluffy bird behind, and I came home to a skinny, Ethiopian bird. Okay, not really, but she had no food left, and a bone dry water dish on the bottom of her cage. She seemed okay, but I am such a softy about animals, mine in particular, that I cried over this. By the time Matt came home, I had given her food and water and vitamins, and she had fluffed right up back to normal. He’s lucky he didn’t get home until she was okay, because when I first happened upon the situation, I was amazingly pissed off. When he came home, he explained that he didn’t realize how much the bird eats. She’s pretty small, and her food dish is huge. He sort of figured she’d be okay for a few days at a time. (Okay, fair enough, but when you look into the cage and see only shells and no water left, that’s what we call a “clue” about her actual food and water consumption.) There are responsibilities that you can shirk without doing real damage, and then there’s endangering the life of a helpless animal—which, as I said, makes you very bad. There are very few things that allow me to achieve my maximum level of pissed off, and mistreating your pets is one of them. So you’d better make sure that each and every one of your pets is happy and healthy, and in the case of dogs and cats, fixed. If you do not do this, I will personally come over to your house, take your pets away from you and give them to nice people instead. But we were speaking of Cassie, who is most assuredly not mistreated. In fact, she’s a spoiled little bird if I ever saw one. I went to buy some nail clippers today, and I ended up dropping about $30 at the pet store. I got her some birdseed (she was almost out) and some millet seed, which she loves. I figure she’s going to be pretty pissed off after I throw a washcloth over her head, flip her upside down and clip her nails. The millet is a peace offering. I also got this expensive yellow perch that’s supposed to keep her nails filed down naturally, so we won’t have to go through the washcloth thing again. I almost bought a tape of birds singing, but it was $15, so I didn’t. I’m going to look on the internet for one, instead.
In keeping with the pet theme of today’s entry, Sheila just told me the best Crazy Dog Lady story I have ever heard. To appreciate this story, you have to keep in mind that her name is Brenda. Brenda the Crazy Dog Lady. So. Last week they fired Roberto, one of my co-workers. He was a fun guy to work with and many of us will miss him. However, his absence has had a peculiar effect on the CDL. She stole his coffee mug (which he left behind) from his desk and has made it her personal mission in life to return it to him. Keep in mind that it’s an ugly, unadorned, beige coffee mug. I find it extremely difficult to believe that he cares about it at all. In fact, he may have left it behind deliberately because he doesn’t care about it. But Brenda doesn’t see it that way. She’s been begging certain members of the office staff for his phone number. She’s tried “I have his coffee mug. He needs his mug back!”, and she’s also tried, “I really want to see how he’s doing.” Then there’s the “pity me” gambit. “I’m on vacation next week and I won’t have anyone to talk to. I need someone to talk to. Please give me his phone number.” That’s so pathetic it’s almost depressing. I almost feel sorry for her, going around, begging someone to pass on his number. (On the other hand, that’s probably just what she wants. Everyone to think, aww, poor Brenda.) When she asks for the phone number, the people who have it have been putting her off because seriously, put yourself in Roberto’s place. First you get fired, then the Crazy Dog Lady calls you every day for a week? It’s enough to drive you to suicide. So, she’s been getting increasingly agitated about this whole thing. And here’s the punchline: last night, Sheila caught her actually TALKING TO THE COFFEE MUG. Swear to god. She pulled the coffee mug out of her file cabinet and started waving her hand over it. And this is what she was saying: “Call Brenda. Tell Roberto to call Brenda. Brenda is on vacation next week. Call Brenda next week… tell Roberto to call Brenda….” We all knew she was crazy, but talking to a COFFEE MUG? Her home town has GOT to be Twin Peaks. She’s probably the long lost twin sister of the Log Lady. “My coffee mug saw something that night…” But as much as I dislike her, I will give credit where credit is due—she’s most definitely kind to animals. |
marku:
 What I'm Reading: Could it be? Nothing? Two days in a row? Oh, I think Adorable Sunday. Actually. yellow... duhJournal Quote of the Day: “It takes a lot of whipped cream to face reality. ”Random Tidbit: I'll make it through the day with some help from Johnny Walker red.Please click these links. It doesn’t cost you a dime, but it gets me one. Mo at the Movies: On Video: Galaxy QuestWork Days Left: 44 |
