Birds birds everywhere!

I am sure when my significant other bought me my first canary about 5 years ago that he had no idea that it was going to spur a love of bird keeping that is still going to this day.

That first canary, Bert, was adoped from a home with two bully parrotlett's in it that were terrorising the poor guy. He was a male German Roller Frosted Canary - which means that he was like tweety bird with frosted tips and had a helluva song box on him. A few years later, he died, and both myself and my guy were so attached to him he was creamated. (yup that is true).

But the empty cage and the empty feeling were not to be ignored and after a respectable amount of time (maybe about a year) I went and found Ringo.

Ringo, is a Glouchester Crested Corona Canary, a breed which is known for sporting a pretty hip bang across their eyes making them look like a Beatle band member.

He is from Montreal and in perfect show form (meaning his legs, feathers, coloration, bangs, crest, and song are in perfect form. We love him.

He has been mentioned in my guys Biography for work and I talk about him all the time. His personality never ceases to make me happy. He sings to rock music at the top of his lungs, spashes around in his little bath, picks at his food, "talks" to anyone who talks to him (canaries are bred for singing which means they are not able to squack or vocalize like some other birds can - so speech is not something that we expect from him).

When my my guys work schedule changed and we were both out of the house, I thought perhaps a mate or friend would be a good solution for him.

Introducing Paris. I called her Paris for two reasons. 1) She is a blonde. lol. 2) I was watching the John Stewart on the Daily Show, he was talking to Michael Moore about his health car Documentary, Sicko. Michael tried to make light of the health care situation in the states by saying that is Paris Hilton is doing ok - then we should all be doing ok - like she is our Proxy. John Stewart stepped in and said "There you have it, Paris Hilton is our canary in the coal mine!". This was the day after I adopted the lil girl canary and it seemed to perfect not to name her Paris.

She was a wild, red factor, german roller mix. Yes I said was, I only had her for a very short period of time before she fell ill and passed away. The sad thing about keep exotics, especially birds, it that once they fall ill there is almost no going back from there. Although I am getting much better at bird keeping and have a keen eye for problems, so I have been able to prevent more than save lately. R.I.P Paris.

The next pair came from a conversation at work. After a trip to Ottawa, which lead to me bringing in my star player, Ringo, to work so that a co worker could look after him for a week and a little bit - a co-worker liked him so much she suggested that I keep him at work. That was never going to happen. Ringo was a member of my family. But I liked the concept.

Bird watching can lower stress levels significantly. There constant chirping, song, movement, and otherwise relaxed and peaceful demeanor have long been in the same catagory as fish for being work place friendly pets. Off in search of other birds I went. Why I was so hell bent I have no idea.

Enter my Zebra Finch Pair, Scarlette and Rhett.

I bought them from a local breeder whose aviary was so cute and quaint, I am pretty sure I will be building on of my own as soon as I can. Rhett is the male, he is the tradition Austrailian coloring for a Zebra finch with his bright orange cheeks, zebra stripes on the neck and upper body, black chest, orange feet and the striped tail feathers that even in the washed out colors stand out. Scarlette is a female Tear Drop Chestnut finch - of the same genre of Zebra but a different color mutation.

They never made it to work. The no pets policy covered even them and I was denied permission. At first, my boyfriend didn't like them, the honked and beeped their way throughout the day and in comparison to the elegant and musical Ringo - they were quite different. But what can I say, they grew on him.

Their chatter, swinging, playing, cuddling, bathing, unison greetings to anyone walking in the room, grooming each other, and just what I came to realise as typical Zebra Finch behaviour charmed us beyond belief and they became members of the family. Little did I know that they were not done surprising us yet.

On our trip to Cuba in November - I left the pair with my mom and her mother to be looked after. When we came back we got them, Ringo, and 5 eggs.

!!!!!!!!

We were shocked! NOw I am not so surprised - after reading that finches live to mate, cuddle, eat, sleep, and play - not necessarily in that order.

The first five never made it :(.

But we didn't have time to feel bad about it before there were 9 more!

The other 9 resulted in what was to take up most of my time and my boyfriends facination for the next couple of months. 

Typically, a finch needs to be about a 1/2 a year to a year old in order to successfully reproduce and raise young. Not my pair, at the impressionable age of just three months old they started trying for a family and didn't quit until they were successful (almost to the detriment of Scarlette's health). The second batch resulted in 4 live chicks. Louder and louder they got - and one day when Scarlette was out getting food for their begging I snapped this shot. There are four little almost open pair of eyes staring back in curiosity from that little basket - with their little tuffs of gray hair poking out all over the place.

This is the progress of about a week or two - they are more aware, and squished, and loud, and I still have no idea how their mother and father managed to get in there and feed them each and every time their yells rang throughout the kitchen. Ringo, had no idea what to think of it all - but I wonder if he did know he was about to be an Uncle soon. They were getting more curious, poking their heads over the edge of the nest peering around, watching their parents, all in a little row.

The row thing didn't stop there. They still do everything together.

Over the period of a few days they had all gotten the courage to jump out of the nest and look about their cages. Needless to say this was an awesome thing to witness and they were downright adorable little grey fluff balls that I just wanted to pet. But refrained.

Here are the chicks. They have none of their coloring here - but you can begin to tell who is who.

And here they are grown. They grew up to be three boys and one girl. Two with the markings of their father, one with gorgeous black cheeks and lines, and the sister is a fawn.

They have been a pleasure and are being adopted by my parents. We will miss them - but something tells me it won't be long before the cycle starts all over again. This time I have my real camera, so I will try and document it a little better.

Ok - done gushing now.

Wiccan's and Health Care

Slowly but surely the people who are closest to me have come to accept my choice of belief system. Mom has been reading and buying books on the subject, people see beautiful pentagrams and buy them for me as gifts, I am constantly getting curious and less judgemental questions about the Wiccan way of life and I am happy to hear them :)

So, I was pleased to see an email in my Facebook Inbox with the subject header "Give me your Pagan/Wiccan knowledge!" from a dear friend of mine. The body of the email was a query about how Wiccan's would react to being in a long term hospitalization situation, what would make us most comfortable, what our culture would have us do differently from the health care program, etc etc.

So - since it is a very interesting question and there is not much information out there about Wiccan's and modern health care I thought I would share my answer with you folks as well.

It was as follows:

Pagan's/Wiccan's/neo-Pagans are not a very demanding religion and have a large number of solitary practitioners so I would be inclined to say that a pagan may be more worried about having a positive influence on you rather than making individual demands to make your job more difficult than it already is.

The first thing that DOES come to mind is that we use sacred circles. On our altars they can be actually defined from colored chalk or ash or granulated minerals - but if we travel and need to feel safe a lot of us will cast a "Circle Casting Spell" in the area we wish to feel peace. Now - that circle can have people moving in and out of it at will - so again, that would not pose a huge issue with you and your job techniques.

Sometimes we wear talismans to help focus on what we want to achieve - so a healing stone would probably be worn on the body somewhere.

We have no special diet - some of us are vegans some like meat.

We do use herbs - so the brewing of a special tea would go a very long way.

Some don't mind being visited by clergy - some will not welcome the visit. Even though Wiccan's are overall a positive group of people - there are others who choose a "darker" path - they would be the type to hold a grudge on the prosecution of our religion by Christians in the past.

Another "challenge" you may find with a Neo-Pagan/Wiccan/Pagan is that since there is still a huge misunderstanding of our practices -we may never even tell you to begin with what our belief structure is. If someone was open about it - they may set up an altar - depending on their choice of altar items (for all pagans altar items are individualized and unique) it may pose a sanitary problem - but as previously mentioned if we thought it would cause your body undue stress - we are not likely to do that. As your body being stressed in our area brings negative energy with it - and negative energy is counterproductive to healing.

The practice of The Craft (which covers all "witchy" practices the way Christianity does for RC and Anglican etc.) is more about life than death so it is unlikely that there will be special requests upon dying.

If a Wiccan is not a solitary practitioner - they would have a coven - and covens can cast spells and send positive intentions to anyone anywhere without having to be around them - so large groups of visitors are not a huge issue either.

That is the best I can do with researching it myself some more - but that would be counter productive to you actually asking me as a person. Sorry it is so all over the place - but I typed what I could about what I actually know about.

Since Wicca is such an individual practice it is hard to predict how someone may act as a Wiccan. We have very few rules - and those walking the "darker" path often break them - but are still considered to be members of the religion.

We have our own healing spells - but we are not delusional and will seek professional medical attention if that is needed. There is no chanting and waving over serious disease or wounds. The basis of our religion is to be one with nature - and dying is only seen as the final step of our gift of life and the act of becoming physically one with mother earth as opposed to spiritually one like we are in life.

I would love to see your piece when it is finished - I am especially curious to see what your other resources provide since as a solitary practitioner I am always curious and interested to hear what others think and feel in our religion.

 

 

 

I was pretty pleased with my answer. I later discovered that my friend scored excellent on her paper - so I guess it sufficed.  :)

Alice! Alice! who the flip is Alice?!

Well – I think I can say without much argument that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a theatrical force to be reckoned with.


The record smashing interpretation of the classic children’s tale was filled with color, drama, action, fun and fear is a trip to be made by adults and children alike.

Biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel, biggest opening weekend for a 3-d movie, 6th biggest opening weekend in history - all of these honors go to Alice, and the movie is far from finished with its run.

The only thing about the whole scenario that ruffles my feathers is the “non-sequel” comment.

I have been watching Disney and fairy tale movies since I could sit still on the couch – and in my opinion, Tim Burton’s Alice is indeed a sequel – or something of that sort.

Alice is full grown, the characters keep making reference to her having been around before, the caterpillar talks to her about her last experience in what she referred to as “Wonderland”, she keeps having a reoccurring dream about a rabbit, the official synopsis of the film is reviewed on the Internet Movie Database as Alice's RETURN to Wonderland. (There are lots of other interesting facts about Alice in the database HERE). All of the evidence points to a seqeulesque performance. Am I alone in these observations? Is it being mistaken as what the movie industry call a "Re-Imagining"? Whatever it is, Joe Average watching this film that is aware of the original film would certainly feel as though this is a follow up to the original story.

Now - moving on.

Johnny Depp is an excellent Mad Hatter. He is mad as they come yet completely endearing and sweet.
Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen with her gigantic head was repulsive, interesting, and maybe madder than the Hatter. She works well with her long term fiance, Tim Burton, and brings interest and untraditional beauty with every performance she casts.

The Cheshire Cat was my favorite character that was non-human - that may have been a bit of nostalgia on my behalf. The rest of the cast, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway, Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, and many others came together to create a masterpeice.

Go see it and enjoy being a kid again!

Music Music

So, ladies and gentlemen - for Christmas this year I was given my first record.

Yes, you heard/read me right.....a record. A vinyl.

This year, while we are surrounded by piracy, digital downloads, P2P sharing, iTunes, download album cards, and last but not least - I found wrapped under the tree looking suspiciously like a wall calendar - a record.

It was the new Dave Matthews Band album - Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.

I am estatic!

The quality and life of music is becoming shorter and shorter.

People of this file sharing generation have no "Collection" of music - they have their most recent playlist and as many singles as they can possibly download onto their harddrive, whether it be legitimate paid for singles or not.

I was so pleased to see an actual tangible piece of music sitting there :) And I have a feeling this is the beginning of my very own love affair with vinyl and the sound that it offers. Hmmmmmm - now where to find a record player.

*dashes off*.