Almost Monday

Just a few days ago, I thought Woodrow's budgie Orlando was on her last legs. She had become obsessed with one of her toys, and she spent most of her time hunched over it, gazing non-stop into one of the mirrors. She didn't stop eating or drinking, and her poo seemed normal. But she just wasn't moving much from one perch, and sometimes she looked haggard from hunching over one mirror.

Orlando is five or six years old. I forget which. And budgies don't live more than 15 years if they're common yellow-and-green varieties. The ones that have been bred for exotic colors like Orlando's near-white pale yellow? They don't last nearly as long.

However, Orlando is by far the smartest and most entertaining and lovable bird we have in the flock. I love Cosmo, and he's great, but he's also really profoundly bitey. That's a normal yellow-naped Amazon trait. I don't hold it against Cosmo, but it makes it really hard to just enjoy his company sometimes.

Orlando is also a pretty grumpy, bitey bird sometimes, but she's got a much smaller beak. That makes for a more sanguine approach even when she's at her most hacked off state.

Anyway, Orlando got all obsessed with this one toy, and I thought she was going into a decline in general and would die any day. I started waking up earlier than Woodrow and purposefully uncovering Orlando's cage because if she was gonna kick the bucket during the night, I didn't want anyone else to have to deal with the trauma of finding a dead budgie.

Finally, I decided to take the toy that she was perched on for hours at a time -- out of the cage.

And lo! And behold! Orlando perked right up and started behaving normally!

Dang. I wish all potentially fatal problems were as easily fixed as Orlando's deadly toy fixation!