night frights

September is a busy month for me in regards to my many 'bird boarder" customers.

I have both "Dover" and "Princess" staying with me for two weeks. "Billy Bob" stayed with me last week.

"Dover" and "Princess" are cockatiels. "Billy Bob" is a lovebird.

My bird room is a chock-a-block full of birds. I am constainly cleaning and fussing over all of them. I make sure my 'visitors" get extra attention. They are the first ones to come out to watch nightly movies. I get fun easy going movies . I am dead serious when I say my birds do not like scary or violent movies. They prefer romantic comedies or animation films. I also make sure they have their out-side cage time to stretch their wings and to socialize.

They get freshly washed greens or carrot slices with their meals. Needless to say it takes a good hour and a half in the morning and an hour at night to get everyone fed, cleaned and organized. This does not include lunch time or any other fussing I do with them during the the rest of day.

"Dover" likes to sit with me when I am doing laundry and working on the computer. "Princess" likes to sit at the edge of the dining room table to monitor everything. "Billy Bob" will fly into the room to aggravate and tease the other birds so I have to keep an eye on him. Sometimes I find him high on the shelf perched on the cookie jar singing and chirping his little heart out.

I usually cover everyone for bedtime around 7:30-8:00pm.

Last night, I heard flapping downstairs at about 2:00am.

Thankfully, I am a light sleeper. I bolted out of bed like toast flying out of a toaster knowing what that flapping meant: night frights.

Something will spook the birds and they will thrash around uncontrollably in their cage. They can really injure themselves. I think "Louie" (my elderly Princess of Wales) fell off his perch and startled the shit out of the other birds causing a domino effect of "night frights".

"Dover" was really flapping around. I had to grab him and hold him close to calm him down. Blood and feathers were everywhere. It was terrible. I have to remain calm not to aggravate the situation further. It's bad when your own birds have night frights but it's even worse when house guests have them.

It took me 45 minutes to get Dover to calm down. He had broken a blood feather as a result of thrashing around. I had to make sure the bleeding stopped. I took him upstairs with me to settle down. After this incident, at night, I take both Dover and Princess upstairs with me. This way I can keep a close eye on them.

During the day, I monitored Dover's well-being. He seems OK. He is sitting with me right now as I type. Needless to say, I don't like to be gone the entire day when I have all these birds.

I have to make sure the little pigeon doesn't wander into the bird room. He scares the shit out of all the other birds. Eventually, when his health checks out completley clean he will join them in his own cage in the bird room.

As of right now, I am focusing on my house guest birds well being.

Never a dull moment.