I control your mind! You will give me seeds! And later, you will give me more! And you will like it!

NOTE: Bruce is cracking open a sunflower seed with his teeth — this is one of the tastiest sunflower seeds that are too big for Peanut to open by himself. In fact, Peanut flew over and landed on Bruce's shoulder — an unusual event — in order to Mind Control him into giving him some seeds.

"I did not bring you over here so that you could Mind Control Bruce into giving you tasty seeds!"

"Ow! Freckles are not tasty seeds."

"Ow! That's my finger, not a tasty seed."

"I did not bring you over here so that you could Mind Control Bruce into giving you tasty seeds!"

"Shoulder...shoulder...shoulder.... That's my Shoulder Boy!" accompanied by hand gestures that gently herd the bird up to my shoulder

"Ow! Quit it!"

"Don't make me take you home!"

"Biting me won't turn me into the Big Sweaty Hand."

"I did not bring you over here so that you could Mind Control Bruce into giving you tasty seeds!"

"Ow! Ears aren't tasty seeds."

As The Master Of The Universe, you woudn't think that Peanut would have to use mind control. But he's very good at it. He leans down a bit, bobs his head up and down a few times, and sends out his Super Powerful Mind Control Rays. He gets the seed every time.

An Internet Friend, after reading the entry "Can I Please Sleep On The Sofa, Instead Of In The Car?," said her mother asked what happened to "poor, weak-minded Bruce?" I told her that Bruce was clearly so upset at annoying me that I let him stay inside. But when I recounted this story to another Internet Friend (Internet Friends are the best!) I realized my error.

After all, Peanut is the Master Of The Universe.

If Bruce were all the way out in the car, he might have been out of range for Mind Control. And then where would Peanut have been when he wanted a late night snack of half a dozen sunflower seeds?

So clearly, Peanut Mind Controlled me into allowing Bruce to stay within range of his Awesome Powers Of Snack Acquisition.

Lucky Bruce!

Matt from the blog Who Loves Appetizers? recently found The Finster Log. He sent me a note, added a link to his web site (thanks!), and even dedicated a post to it: "Finch blog," which talks about woeful deaths, and how birds get such strange names. This last was a reference to my habit of calling all small birds Finster, and more specifically, the late Zebra finch named Little Naked Finster Buddy. (He really was quite naked.) Matt had a Society finch called Little Buddy that died not too long ago. Partly because Little Naked Finster Buddy has two middle names, and partly, I'm sure, because I obsess about my birds so much, Matt decided that I'm "officially weirder" than he is.

Which made me laugh. Especially after I read some of his posts about his birds, particularly the one called "Bird song." See, Matt sings songs about his birds. Here's the lyrics to one:

Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy, Little Buddy all day long.

Because, you know, that's pretty weird!

Just now, Jen from the Bug Blog pointed out that Julie has a wonderful sale going on at eBay. Usually, Julie sells molted feathers from her giant flock of birds, but right now she's offering to let her MASSIVE MAD MACAWS MUTILATE the MYSTERY MERCHANDISE of your choice. What a great idea! I wrote to Jen that I was sorry I hadn't thought of that, and Jen e-mailed back "I can see that now - 'send me your photos and Peanut will take hundreds of tiny little bites out of the edges.'"

YES!! EXACTLY!!!

Because, really, the best people are the ones that let their pets Mind Control them into singing songs, giving them funny names, and letting them destroy glossy photographs of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

So in the spirit of Mind Control, I've decided to add a poll to determine which bird owner is the weirdest. What do you think?


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I don't love the format of this poll, but I'm not the Code Queen that I wish I were....

By way of explanation, there were a couple of days of network troubles, a couple of days of travel, and a couple of days of server problems.

Peanut was very happy to have me back, he must have squawked for ten minutes straight. Then he started his Mind Control tricks, for tasty seeds. After that, he wouldn't let me out of his sight — although that's not so unusual. This morning he yelled for me, I hadn't slept well so it took awhile for me to get out of bed, but I sure heard him. Things should get back to normal soon.

Bruce has been learning how to fly. He's human, so he's using a plane. But since he's having a bit of a hard time with the landings (what with gravity, and all), he decided to go to the source, and ask Peanut for some tips.

Unfortunately, every time Bruce sits down with him for a serious conversation, Peanut uses his Awesome Powers of Mind Control to get tasty seeds. One minute Bruce is trying to understand the mindset of a small, green bird, and the next minute he's giving that bird a sunflower seed. Or two. Or three. Whatever it is that Bruce is learning from Peanut, I don't think it has anything to do with landing an airplane.

When Peanut is closed up in his house and he wants to get my attention — well, face it, when he wants to get out — he'll climb around on the ceiling of the cage, and call out. Loudly. I guess this is the biggest, most noticeable thing he can think of to do. And, it kinda works, since I think it's pretty funny, and usually pay him a bit of attention, even if I don't actually let him out of the cage. It isn't a great photo, but you can click here for a bigger version if you want.

As I said, usually he hangs from the ceiling and yells, but today, when I didn't respond right away, he gave me the silent treatment. He just hung there, upside down, for at least ten minutes. Staring. You know how he tries to Mind Control the people around him. It didn't work though. I didn't take him out of his house until after I ordered three hundred dollars worth of tasty seeds.

Sometimes Sally stands on one foot, sometimes Sally stands on two feet. Can I tell if her foot still seems sore? No, not really. So I caught her squirming, tucked up body, looked at her foot, and saw no sign of an injury. Just to be sure, I smeared the foot (and quite a bit of her body) with Neosporin, and put her back in the Finsterium. Click for a close up of Sally. She's very lovely, now that she's had a bath or two.

For a good part of the afternoon, both Frank and Sally have been sitting next to each other on various perches, each standing on one foot, each possibly looking slightly under the weather. I hope they're just messing with my head. Maybe they've taken lessons from Peanut, and are trying to Mind Control me....

You wouldn't think that sunflower seeds coud ever be evil, but when they're hiding around the corner of your house, tucked back just a couple of inches behind the tea towel that hangs on the back, that's just what they are. Pure, unadulterated evil. Apparently. Bruce discovered this "game," which I'll admit is pretty funny. Peanut stares, shakes his head, yells, stares some more, and just leaves them there, until you move the seeds just a half inch closer to him. Pretty funny. Click here for a close up of Peanut trying to stare the seeds into submission. One day, I'm sure he'll learn enough mind control to move them himself.

First, I realize the bird in this picture isn't Ovaltine. It's Peanut, looking very handsome, trying to Mind Control me into letting him eat all the sunflower seeds in this pretty dish. I won! You can click here to see a big version. Since Peanut is so photogenic, and apparently I can't take a decent picture of the Finsters to save my life, we'll be seeing a lot of the Master of the Universe for awhile.

Meanwhile, the Finsters are alive and well, eating, sleeping, singing, pooping and napping as usual. Today the Finsters got a spoonful of scrambled egg. Ovaltine flew over toward me, and kept following the dish as I moved to put it in the cage. Once the dish was inside, he was all over it. He didn't squeak and chirp like he did the first time I gave the new Finsters egg, but he did fall over a couple of times in his zeal to get to the yummy, yellow goodness. Well, he isn't the most coordinated of birds.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, among others, ran a story at Thanksgiving about wild turkeys, and how suburban areas make pretty good homes for them. It seems the wild turkey is a success story — there were only 30,000 in the US in the 1930s, and there are seven million now. Which means that people are starting to see the birds in their yards, and there are growing reports of aggression. This makes sense: wild turkeys live in flocks, and are ruled by the pecking order. If humans are nearby, some of the dominant males might assume that humans are part of that flock, and try to dominate them. Lucky for the turkeys, humans often do things that validate this thinking, like putting food out for them, or turning their backs and running away from the sharp spurs on the backs of their legs. As the article puts it, some human behavior "can encourage these lordly males to think that humans are a subservient life form."

The article, written by William M. Bulkeley for The Wall Street Journal, is called "One for 'The Birds': Wild turkeys attack people," (November 23, 2005). The photograph is from the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Public Photo Gallery, and was taken by Hal Korber. You can click here for a bigger version.

You're probably wondering what wild turkeys have to do with lunch with Peanut.

You may recall from the third installment that Peanut eats fast, and then Mind Controls Bruce into giving him sunflower seeds. Which means that if parrotlets are anything like wild turkeys — and they probably are — then Peanut rules Bruce. Which we've known for awhile. (In fact, we've been calling Bruce Peanut's Seed B**** for a few months, at least.)

But as we eat lunch with Peanut more regularly, Peanut has become more demanding. After eating quinoa, granola, oat groats, or some combination of them all, Peanut makes his way to Bruce's shoulder, which is the prime location for demanding sunflower seeds. Lots of them. I keep trying to explain that Peanut is giving him little Nibbles of Love — which he gives me all the time during snacking sessions. But Bruce insists they're Bites of Dominance, which, along with the Mind Control, makes him incapable of resisting Peanut's power.

Apparently.

I'm still watching Peanut. He's still eating well, and his poops look fine, but he remains less active than usual. And he's picked up a new habit: sometimes when he's eating a seedball he stands on his left foot. He'll stand on both feet as he's reaching for another beakful, but once he has seeds in his mouth he goes back to standing on his left foot. The first time he did this I called the vet and brought him back for another quick look. Nothing.

Well, that's probably good news. But I'm still watching.

Now, there's one event I didn't mention last time, which is that Bruce has been away — on the longest trip away from home in awhile. I'm beginning to think this is the underlying factor behind Peanut's change in behavior.

I recently came across the article "Understanding Feather Plucking in Parrots" by Roy A. Earle & Louise Prowse. The article suggests that a bird will start plucking its feathers when "something has gone wrong in the house flock which has upset the stability and probably also the perceived hierarchy structure in the flock." Now, Peanut isn't plucking his feathers, but he has changed his behavior. The article also talks about which creature a bird might consider to be dominant in a household. I'm guessing Peanut thinks he's on top — well, he is the Master of the Universe, and all. But I'll bet that he considers Bruce to be over me in the hierarchy. Oh, sure, we both feed him snacks, but I feed Peanut his regular meals, free of charge. Peanut has to win tasty seeds from Bruce by yelling, lunging at him, and some serious Mind Control.

So it doesn't surprise me that Peanut has been thrown by having the dominant human away from the house for so long. Unfortunately, Bruce will be doing a lot more traveling in the next few months. We'll see what happens.

After reading my post about the seed stuck under Bruce's spacebar key, Jen reminded me of a similar experience she had about a year ago, with the letter "P" and a single birdseed. Which got me thinking that there are a few instances where people really ought to keep birds in mind when they make up their rules and regulations. For example:

Official list of things for tech support to check on when someone has a problem with their computer:

• Is it plugged in?
• Is it turned on?
• Are all the cables connected properly?
• Have you read the f*ing manual?
• What, are you still using IE?

Item that should be added to the list:

• Are there any seeds stuck under the keys?

Official list of things for hair care specialists to check on before they offer to put product in a client's hair:

• Do you have any allergies I should know about?
• Do you have any skin conditions?
• Can you afford this?

Item that should be added to the list:

• Does your bird sit on your head and preen your hair?

Airplane pilots have already figured out that birds should be included in their checklists. Now, checklists are really long, and include things like making sure the oil and fuel levels are sufficient, there's no water in the fuel, the tires are properly inflated, the brakes are in good repair, there are no dents in the fuselage, all the fasteners are in place and secure, control surfaces are properly attached and move freely, and there are no oil leaks or obstructions in the engine compartments. And when they say "obstructions," they mean, among other things, bird nests. Really. These hidey-holes make good nest sites. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) even has pictures of one (and collisions, too, sad to say).

Maybe pilots pay attention to birds because they know that Birds Rule The Sky.

To be honest, I haven't seen any mating going on — although that happens so quickly between Finsters I could easily have missed it. But let me tell you, Szechwan (Pepper) is ready! He's been busy, busy, busy building a nest!

This is a little difficult, of course, since I still haven't been giving him any nesting material. Although Bruce has. Apparently, the Finsters have picked up some Mind Control tricks from Peanut. Twice now I've found some bits and pieces of paper in the Finsterium, and Bruce chuckling in the office, trying to hide.

But Szechwan (Pepper) has been very clever at finding his own nesting materials. There's the occasional sprig of dill and leaf from the plastic vines — and of course, molted feathers. But he's doing better than that: he's tearing little strips off of the newspaper I put down to catch bird poop.

He's gotten more adept as the days go on, tearing bigger and bigger strips. He's a very clever and busy bird!

Szechwan (Pepper)'s girlfriend is Cassia. They hop in and out of the nest box, dragging feathers and strips of paper out with them (by mistake, I'm sure). They also spend quite a bit of time rearranging everything in the box. One or the other will stand on the porch of their box with a feather or stolen leaf in their beaks, rolling it around for a minute, then they pop back inside to place the item carefully back. This has been going on for a little while now.

We're well overdue for the yearly Finsterium cleaning, which includes cleaning and making new nest boxes. There have been two bad fights now that Szechwan (Pepper) is thinking about mating, but those both happened at bedtime, which can be a tricky time even when no bird has thoughts of love in their heads. If I can ever finish the new nest boxes, and clean out the Finsterium, I might just get some raffia and let the little fellow do it right. There's nothing like little peeps in the Spring time!

Of course, if I don't get moving soon, Szechwan (Pepper) and Cassia may just have a little family anyway, poop or no poop!