{"id":73,"date":"2013-09-11T22:09:30","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T22:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/?p=73"},"modified":"2013-09-14T12:17:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T12:17:26","slug":"my-parrot-blunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/archives\/73","title":{"rendered":"My Parrot Blunder"},"content":{"rendered":"<style><!--\n\/* Font Definitions *\/\n@font-face\n\t{font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\";\n\tmso-font-charset:78;\n\tmso-generic-font-family:auto;\n\tmso-font-pitch:variable;\n\tmso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;}\n@font-face\n\t{font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\";\n\tmso-font-charset:78;\n\tmso-generic-font-family:auto;\n\tmso-font-pitch:variable;\n\tmso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;}\n@font-face\n\t{font-family:Cambria;\n\tpanose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;\n\tmso-font-charset:0;\n\tmso-generic-font-family:auto;\n\tmso-font-pitch:variable;\n\tmso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;}\n \/* Style Definitions *\/\np.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal\n\t{mso-style-unhide:no;\n\tmso-style-qformat:yes;\n\tmso-style-parent:\"\";\n\tmargin:0cm;\n\tmargin-bottom:.0001pt;\n\tmso-pagination:widow-orphan;\n\tfont-size:12.0pt;\n\tfont-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;\n\tmso-fareast-font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\";\n\tmso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;\n\tmso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;\n\tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";\n\tmso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}\n.MsoChpDefault\n\t{mso-style-type:export-only;\n\tmso-default-props:yes;\n\tfont-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;\n\tmso-fareast-font-family:\"\uff2d\uff33 \u660e\u671d\";\n\tmso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;\n\tmso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;\n\tmso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;\n\tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";\n\tmso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}\n@page WordSection1\n\t{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;\n\tmargin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;\n\tmso-header-margin:36.0pt;\n\tmso-footer-margin:36.0pt;\n\tmso-paper-source:0;}\ndiv.WordSection1\n\t{page:WordSection1;}\n--><\/style>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I didn\u2019t realize my mistake until I was picking out cover images for my books. Every book\u2014<i>every single book<\/i>\u2014contained a parrot. A lively, personable, trouble-making parrot. I was floored. I\u2019d written and edited those stories over the last 18 years, and had only recently decided to publish them as ebooks. At <i>no<\/i> point had I made a conscious decision to let parrots steal the show in every book. Yet there they were, all vying to be part of the cover designs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So how did I become secretly (and quite cluelessly) obsessed with parrots? Thinking back, it happened over a two-year period in the mid-80s. I was living in an apartment that housed two Amazon parrots, and I was working in a wild bird care center <!--more-->that was the home of an old Macaw. It was such a short period of time, I hadn\u2019t realized how much of an impact those birds had had on me. Here\u2019s why two years with three unique birds turned me into a lifetime parrot lover:<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *Parrots have mega personalities. <\/b>A parrot is a pet with an attitude. A major attitude. Mortimer\u2014the Macaw at the wild bird care center\u2014<i>had<\/i> to have coffee at breakfast. If he didn\u2019t get his coffee, he\u2019d pace around the kitchen until someone finally poured him a cup. Barney and Sarah, the parrots I was living with, loved peanut butter. But they\u2019d only eat it off dessert spoons (Sarah always held hers with her left foot, Barney with his right). And since Sarah <i>hated<\/i> having a dirty face, she ended every meal by using the couch as her napkin. If a newcomer came into the apartment, Barney would flirt\u2014puffing up his feathers and doing a silly little dance\u2014to get their attention. And Sarah? She\u2019d get in a snit whenever Barney flirted, and would turn her back on him and sulk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *Parrots are funny when they\u2019re drunk.<\/b> Mortimer loved sweet white wine, and if one of the bird care center owners left a glass unattended, he\u2019d lap it up as quickly as he could. And a drunk parrot is <i>not<\/i> a dignified parrot. Mortimer would lift up one foot to scratch himself and fall right off his perch. After laboriously climbing back up, he\u2019d stretch out his wings&#8230;and fall right off the perch, again!<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *Parrots are surprisingly destructive.<\/b> You don\u2019t need a paper shredder if you have a parrot. I lost an entire Oxford dictionary one afternoon because of Sarah. She decided to make a nest, and in the three hours I was gone she demolished the entire dictionary and produced a very impressive bird-sized bungalow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *Parrots are great trainers. <\/b>The neighborhood we lived in wasn\u2019t safe enough for evening runs, so I\u2019d jog up and down the apartment stairwell with Barney on my right shoulder. As I raced down the stairs, he\u2019d lean forward, stretch out his neck, spread his wings and bob up and down, pretending he was flying. The much slower trip <i>up<\/i> the stairs annoyed him, and if I started to run out of steam, he\u2019d bite my ear (hard) to make me speed up. Barney was the best trainer I could have ever had. I became very fit thanks to him!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Those three parrots added a lot of bedlam, dander and laughter to my life. And when I was sorting through cover designs for my books, I realized that even now, 25 years later, I still miss them!<\/p>\n<p>*Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my blog and you\u2019ll never miss my posts! It\u2019s easy: Just enter your email address in the upper right corner of this page. I\u2019ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/BarneySarah.pdf\">Barney&amp;Sarah<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t realize my mistake until I was picking out cover images for my books. Every book\u2014every single book\u2014contained a parrot. A lively, personable, trouble-making parrot. I was floored. I\u2019d written and edited those stories over the last 18 years, and had only recently decided to publish them as ebooks. At no point had I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits","category-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}