The first thing I had to do this morning was bring Peanut into the back room to see where all the Finsters were. They're his pets, and he's been very upset the few times when they're not in the Big House. He was clearly concerned this morning, very quiet, looking around. Once we got into the back room he started "arnking" almost non-stop. Very happy bird! How to describe an arnk? It's sort of like a short burst of a cat's purr (although I hate to mention cats). He arnks when he's really happy, like when he's visiting a Finster in the hospital cage, or when we get home really late and he realizes he'll get Warm Toasties after all. Peanut and his house stayed in the back room while we cleaned, so he'd have company.

The yearly cleaning of the Finster Girl Memorial Finsterium is a big job, and this time it's actually been closer to two years (ouch), which might be why we were dreading it so much. In fact, it went more quickly than we expected. Good tools help: rubber gloves, dust masks, two vacuum cleaners, a nice collection of scrubby brushes and scrapy things, and a bird-safe citrus cleaner soap. It took about four hours, and since it's a pretty nasty job, this is all I'll say:

After a break to have lunch and let the Finsterium dry, we put in the new nest boxes, the brand-new concrete perches, the rest of the perches, lining paper, food, water, etc. Then we carried the holding cage over to the Big House, lined up the two open doors, and waited for the Finsters to fly back home. While this is much easier than trying to catch the birds one by one, they are always surprisingly slow to fly home. And a three-foot long hardware cloth cage gets awkward to hold after the first few minutes.

Finally, they were all inside, and freaking out! New nest boxes! New concrete perches! New perch configurations! New breezes (we finally took the plastic wrapper off from last winter)! New new new! "And no Frank!" said Sally. Finstinations everywhere.

Fritz and family came by in the afternoon to take Rose Red home. I'll miss her, since I don't have any zebra finches now, but she was awfully lonely with Fluff Nugget gone. She's going to set up house with Shakespear (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). More later?