We have an issue that's a real hornet's nest. Specifically, a hornet's nest on the back of the house. Lord John will be coming by to deal with it sometime tomorrow. We'll have to move Skye to the other side of the house to keep her away from any fumes from the poison he'll be spraying.

purpleglitter and I are now Woburnites. The move has been a stressful ordeal and we still have quite a lot left to do. The washer hookups leak and so does the roof and the basement. I need to get the landlord out to fix them (though he'll probably just fix the room and the hookups). I still have to drill a hole for the ethernet and get the birdroom in a state in which the birds can fly. I need to unpack and organize the kitchen and set up the back rooms. The livingroom is still undone as well. I still need to find someone to rent the old place. In order to do that, I'm going to spend the next 4 days in Arlington. That means if I want to get any progress done here, today is really my only chance until the weekend, so back to work.

I haven't been reading my friends list much the last few weeks and I probably won't be reading it much until this is all over with. If there is something important that you think I should read, please comment with a link.

Busy busy, but this will be worth it.

I found a Dilly dot on my shirt this morning. That bodes good luck.

yesterday
as lake was leaving
i found a pigeon in the back garden
she was just sitting there
i went up to her
she was unable to fly
i picked her up and put her in a box
and gave her some food
and water
i checked her wings
they were not broken
i tried to coax her to fly
but all she could do was flutter
she got used to me quickly
and would step up onto my hand
and she even jumped onto my shoulder

the rain was coming
i couldn't leave her outside
so i got one of the bird cages we don't use anymore
and put her in it
in the basement
i tried to find an animal rescue that would take her
no luck
everyone i called was at capacity
and gave me the same speech about not enough funding
i continued to try throughout the day

i kept watch on her in the basement
around 2, i brought her outside
she had lice
pretty bad lice
the rain had stopped
and i sat with her on the back porch
for about an hour and a half
picking the lice off her
and giving her scritches
she just laid in my hand

i gave her some water
from a bowl
as i held her

i put her back in her cage
i had other things to do during the day
the next time i went down she couldn't use her legs
she was flopping around the cage
she was getting worse
i gave her more water
though i had to hold her head up to the bowl
i picked some more of the lice off
and put her back

i was still trying to find a rehabber
but at this point it was becoming clear
i wouldn't find a place until the morning

the next time i went down
she was having spasms
i had talked to a vet
she told me to make sure to give her some gruel through an oral syringe
i had come down to do that
but i never did
her neck was twisted around so much that i thought it was broken
i moved it back
she was still alive
but she was stiff
she felt half-dead
it wasn't much longer
i buried her in the garden where i found her
the rains had started again
i placed her in the earth
with some wish pods
under the tree
in the garden
where she can fly away

i think i was wrong about my toe being broken
i think it is just badly sprained
not that the swelling has gone down
it is easier to tell
that is good
though it still hurts to walk
and running is out of the question
but it will heal much faster
not that i am planning to do much running in the near future

i feel a bit embarrassed about the confusion
but it's really not a big deal
i always feel as if i've failed when i'm wrong about something
i need to let myself be human
even if being human makes my skin crawl a bit
a bit of internalized anthropophobia

tonight was the last night of the bird meds
i am glad
tomorrow we will find if dubbins is better
i am worried

tomorrow is also paddington's grooming appointment
i moved it to tomorrow so lake could drive
because i had a not-broken toe
a strain would have stopped me to
so either way
tomorrow
which might be today by some people's estimation
but i don't change the day until neitherday has passed
the penny plan goes through neitherday
the day changes at 4am

i am tired
i must be up early
i should go to bed now
but i probably won't

i broke my toe today
i do not like having a broken toe
it hurts
however, at least it's just a toe broken
even though i can't run with a broken toe
i can still walk if i am careful
i taped my toe to it's neighbor
with a popsicle stick in between
cut to size of course
i don't think i'll be able to get paddington to the groomer tomorrow

the birds are sick
well only dubbins is know to be sick
protozoans
but they have to take meds twice a day
just in case
they hate it
and it makes me sad to give it to them
because i worry they hate me for making them take it
i've been giving it to them for 9 days
only one more day
and we see if dubbins is cured

we found out sir dubbins is a girl
but she'll always be our sir dubbins

the penny plan goes well, but i have made it incredibly complicated
the whole things start simply thing
that's just the way it is

i haven't been on livejournal much lately
mostly because the penny plan
because i have to pay to use livejournal
although i often miss the level of interaction i had with people here
it is probably a good thing that i am getting things done

i am hungry
i should eat some food

Every time I bring the birds out of their cages or put them back in, I feel I've missed someone, then I realized it is Statler. I wish he was still here.

Statler died today. We didn't know the plastic vines we were using to decorate the cage had strings in the middle of them. The birds had stripped the plastic from parts of the vine and Statler got tangled and hung himself in the string. I feel so guilty. I wanted to give him a better life.

Skye is home!!

She had prepidil (prostaglandin) applied topically but hadn't pasted the egg when I came in to visit her. On my way home from the visit, I got a call saying she had passed the egg! She passed it as they were preparing to put her under anesthesia for ovocentesis. She didn't have to have it done and now my Skye bird is home where she belongs!

Skye is at Angell Memorial. She was admitted last night and is egg bound. She has an abnormally large egg in her. She's getting an additional calcium shot tonight, but if she hasn't passed the egg by morning our options are ovocentesis or prostaglandin. Both are risky. purpleglitter and I have decided on ovocentesis because we believe skye is more likely to be able to fight the risks associated with ovocentesis. We are also considering having her oviduct removed. The procedure is risky on a budgie, but so is her reoccurring problem with egg binding. Further, while introducing its own risks, having her oviduct removed would eliminate one of the key risks of ovocentesis: remaining bits of shell creating a future blockage.

Please keep Skye in your thoughts and prayers.

found via rm:

Known for gliding along local waterways with statuesque grace, the mute swan is rarely thought of as an environmental hazard. Wildlife experts in Connecticut say that mute swans, like these at Holly Pond in Stamford, devour shoreline vegetation, displace waterfowl and other creatures, and can even attack people. But wildlife experts say that the swan’s elegant facade conceals an ecological menace that devours shoreline vegetation, scares away other waterfowl and can even attack humans. The bird is now a target of a campaign to reduce its numbers in the state’s delicate coastline habitats. The leaders of the effort are conservationists, including the Connecticut Audubon Society, which in the coming months will intensify a campaign to urge state officials to control the swans’ population, which stands at about 1,100. ... Kathryn Burton, president of SaveOurSwans U.S.A., a nonprofit organization in East Lyme, Conn., said the group would actively oppose the Audubon campaign as well. “I’m not going to let it go,” Ms. Burton said. “They really don’t care about the birds. It’s just unjust.” Connecticut’s swan population has more than doubled in the last three decades. Mr. Bull said that one idea for reducing the number of swans was to disrupt the nesting birds’ eggs to limit reproduction, a tactic known as addling. He said the Audubon Society was not suggesting that any of the 1,100 swans in Connecticut be killed — though other states have taken that step. full story

Humans are far more of a threat to the environment than swans. There are only 1,100 mute swans in Connecticut, if the human population of the state were only 1,100 the humans would still have more of an environmental impact, especially if those humans were typical modern Americans.

Environmentalists wanted to kill of the cherry-headed conures in San Francisco, the monk parakeets are always under attack even though they are essentially a replacement species for the extinct Carolina parakeet. Even here in Arlington, the Friends of Spy Pond still hate the geese.

The Audubon society wants to get rid of swans, well in this world nothing should surprise me anymore. Sometimes things still do, but they shouldn't.

This has been a wonderful and merry Christmas so far. purpleglitter got me wonderful gifts, including a new birding camera — the same model as the broken one, so that it will work with my telephoto lens.

My parents gave me a brass clock once owned by my great-grandfather. It's an old electric clock and wasn't made with the ability to start up on its own. A knob in the back must be spun just right so that it "catches", then the electric power will take over. The neat thing about the clock is that it will run backwards if the knob is spun backwards. I used to always set it running backward when I was a kid, and it is running backwards in my livingroom now.

Woke up about an hour ago, had a bowl of creamy mushroom soup and went outside to start shoveling. The snow had turned to sleet by the time I got out there. A good 5 inches of the mix, mostly loose snow, was on the ground.

I got some pictures of one of the dark-eyed juncos that have been hanging around yesterday, but the sun had went down too far to get good exposures. I'm going to try again Monday. Without my birding camera, I have to be sneaky to get close enough for a good shot. Sneaky in this case means feeding them on fenceless fenceposts near the window.