No Pirate is Complete Without a. . .

Parrot!

Well, in our case it is a Cockatiel, but we aren't real pirates, anyway.

So, yeah, we have a new addition to our family! A white and yellow cockatiel we have named Kaiser. (that's German for Emperor) We will post pictures soon, but I don't have them here at work.

It was actually a cool story. I was at work (this is Dan, by the way) and my buddy Kelly was taking off on a road trip. I thought he had already left when I get a call on my cell.

"Dude, come check this out!"

"What is it?"

"There is a bird out here!"

"Umm, OK?"

"No, like a real bird, like a parrot!"

"Serious?"

"Yeah! Come check it out!"

So out I went. And there, sure enough, there on the ground next to the grain silos was a real-life cockatiel. I was thinking to myself - 'What the crap? How did that get here?' and then I thought - 'Obviously it flew, genius.'

Kelly was on his way out, like I said, so that left me to take care of the little guy. I figured for sure he was going to take off into the stratosphere as soon as I approached, but he didn't. Instead he just sort-of sat there while I bent over and picked him up. Easy as pie.

Of course, as soon as I had him in my hands, he started biting me, but not hard. Not like: I hate you, put me down. More like: Dad! You're embarrassing me!

Oh, yeah. We are already completely attached.

Anyway, I kept him in my office for a few hours until Dana showed up for our car-pool home, and then I surprised her with him. Completely one of those 'Mom, look what followed me home from school' moments.

On the way home we stopped at PetCo to pick up some supplies. Lucky for us we still have our birdcage from when we had parakeets, so we were pretty much good to go once we bought some bird seed. So now he lives in our living room across the street from our rabbit. Even though he was completely unexpected, he fits in our family pretty well.

The folks at PetCo gave us some pointers on how to go about finding Kaiser's previous owners, since it is obvious that someone has put a lot of effort and love into him. Of course we would hate to have someone else's beloved pet living with us when its other owners are looking for it, so we put an ad on Craigs List and a few other pet Lost and Found sites, so we will see what happens. Maybe we are just bird foster-parents for now, but we would be happy to adopt him completely.

He already knows a few tricks, like how to step up and how to do the wolf-call (the typical two note whistle that you can get sued for sexual harassment for).

So there are pictures to come, probably in another post along with Dana's big news! Stay Tuned!