To be a little enigmatic: Bruce has been a technical consultant for a legal issue connected to a sector of the US government for about two years now. Vague enough for you? Most of the time, he's been commuting to Washington, DC for the work; believe it or not, it's cheaper for him to live in Ann Arbor and commute to DC than it is to buy a place in the city. But a few months ago the Barack Obama transition team got offices in the same block that he was working in. Traffic got busier, Secret Service guys started showing up everywhere, and everyone realized they would never get plane tickets or hotel rooms for the week of Inauguration without paying thousands of dollars. So the folks Bruce was working for finally got their IT guys to provide everyone with secure, online access, and since the week Obama was sworn into office, Bruce and the guys have been able to work from home. Thanks, Obama administration!

Of course, this means that Bruce has been home, spoiling Harley, since late January. And this means since Sunday, when Bruce had to go to DC for a few days for a meeting, that Harley has been STARVING. TO. DEATH. Because Bruce isn't around to give him snacks whenever he wants them. Bruce is very weak that way.

It's not that I never give Harley snacks. It's just that I don't give him unlimited snacks, and I make him work for them. Here's a pretty complex foraging toy I made for him a little while ago:

Two kraft paper boxes, the smaller one is four inches square; organic timothy hay (the Finsters get this to build their nests) and crumply paper strips for filler; various toys and snacks to hide inside. The long black things are big twist-ties that I string through the holes I punched in the boxes to attach the whole thing to Harley's cage. Here it is, almost done:

You can see I cut lots of holes into the boxes, so Harley would know there were things inside. Also, because he can be pretty lazy when it comes to destroying toys, so I had to get him started, and make it a little easier for him. Here it is, in place:

And here is Harley, sitting on top:

You can see where he's torn it up a bit. The thing is, his laziness not only keeps him from ripping apart the kraft paper (it's too haaaaaaard!), it also means he only attacks it from certain spots. Specifically, from that rope perch next to the box toy, and from the top of the box. Not from the two sides eminently approachable if only he'd climb around on the top of his cage — no, not at all. After a certain point, he was smart enough to figure out that if he chewed up any more of the top of the box, he'd fall in. But he wasn't quite smart enough to figure out that he might get stuck on the top of the box — which he did, twice. Badly. So stuck that I had to rescue him. Poor guy. So I moved it to the opposite corner of his cage, so he'd have that whole front bar to climb on. Despite the occasional new snack I added, this spot wasn't very popular either.

That is, until Bruce went out of town for a few days, and suddenly Harley started STARVING. TO. DEATH.

TO DEATH. I say. Death. Really. The box had been sitting in this spot for almost two weeks, practically untouched. But once Bruce went out of town for the first time in months, and Harley realized that I wasn't miraculously going to turn into his Unlimited Snack Monkey, it only took him about ten minutes to empty it out completely:

Don't worry, I've been weighing the poor starving bird, and he isn't wasting away. Partly because he helped me eat my risotto with artichoke hearts the other night. It turns out he's quite the foodie! You know, except when it comes to the whole-grain, organic food I lovingly sprout, cook and chop for him every day. That stuff he pretty much ignores.