Befriending parrots

Have you ever been licked by a parrot?

I have.

I never realised it before but I absolutely must have a pet parrot. I was visiting my grandparents in Wellington for the weekend when my uncle and his family showed up for Sunday lunch, feathery friend in tow. Here he is with my Auntie.

Mac the Macaw (a name bestowed upon him by a previous owner), was not what I expected of a bird. That being said, I didn’t really have any expectations to begin with. I don’t know much about birds, and I know even less about parrots, specifically. Turns out they’re kind of like puppies with wings. Let’s all take a moment to close our eyes and imagine that.

I never expected parrots to be so cuddly. He wasn’t particularly cuddly with me, tried to attack my hand a few times actually, but he absolutely loves my Auntie. He spent most of the afternoon perched on her shoulder, dropping his head down so she could scratch the back of his neck. He let her kiss his beak, and would sometimes crawl around to the front of her chest so he could snuggle against her.

A couple of times he climbed onto my wrist and hauled himself up onto my shoulder, but I think his main objective was to play with my hairtie. At one point I turned to look at him, as I could see him staring at me out of the corner of my eye. After a brief moment of locked gazes he leaned forward and pecked my nose. It didn’t hurt, but then I don’t think he was trying to hurt me. Looking at the size and sharpness of his beak, I decided I didn’t want to know what it felt like when he did want to hurt me.  Sometimes he’d put his beak around my finger, but I was told it was just a love-bite.

My uncle also informed me Mac had a penchant for painted toenails. This wasn’t a problem for me, but it did turn out to be one for Nana-Di, whose toes Mac became a little fixated with.

While we sat around the dinner table eating, Mac sat on a perch in the corner of the room, but about three times during that meal I turned to see him carefully climbing down to the ground and toddling underneath the table, making a beeline for Nana-Di’s feet. At one point I felt something brush against my leg, and looked down to see his bright blue tail feathers disappearing beneath the tablecloth. Before I had a chance to warn her, Nana-Di was shrieking and jumping up from her chair. 

So it’s decided, I need to have one of these. The only problem is they’re horribly expensive – Mac cost $6000 to buy – and they can live in captivity potentially for 70 years. That’s one hell of a commitment to make.

But they’re soooo cuuuuute…

Falling to certain death

Blog posts are coming few and far between, I’m afraid to say. It’s been two weeks since I last wrote, and every day I feel a little guilty that I’m letting my poor little blog sit growing dust while I gallivant off around the countryside, travelling between Wanganui and Tauranga and everywhere else under the sun.

Today I dropped 80 metres from a bridge above a canyon, all in the name of journalism.

That’s right, as part of my job, I was sent off to Gravity Canyon near Taihape to get strapped into a harness and do a bridge swing while our photographer took unflattering photos of my facial expressions. Needless to say, my throat hurts from all the screaming. He, of course, didn’t make a peep when it was his turn.

“You have to scream like a girl so that I don’t look like a wuss,” I said to him as he was getting strapped in.

“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath as I watched him fall and swing in total silence. The pictures afterwards only showed a look of mild concern on his face, nothing close to the almighty terror I was exhibiting.

Yeah, that terror.

 

Difficult kittens and new lives

Well, I’m officially a resident of Whanganui now. I’m settled into my cousin’s house with my cat, and I start my new job on Monday. It’s hard to believe it’s actually happening.

The drive down was a nightmare.

The problem is this, you see. Tonka likes to be out of his cage in the car, BUT THREE TIMES NOW he has pooped in my car. This isn’t something I really want again, so I decided to keep him in his cage. At least, then, it would be contained.

Now, the last time I took him on a long car trip, I discovered I could let him out of the car for a walk without worrying about him running away. This is no longer the case. He starts exploring, and he doesn’t stop until he’s out of sight. I even lost him in one of those drain pipes that run underneath driveways.

The first place I let him out for a walk in, he behaved. Here he is, contemplating life. 

About halfway through the trip, Tonka started to pant like a dog. He does this occasionally when he’s tired or hot, and it always looks hilarious. I pulled over at another rest stop and tried to give him some water. The little monster wouldn’t drink it. I tried everything – pushing his face in it, putting it on the backs of his paws, squirting it into his mouth – nothing worked. He just wasn’t interested. I was becoming increasingly worried because his panting was starting to get heavier. Eventually I just squirted water all over his fur and turned the air conditioning towards his cage, hoping that would help cool him down at least. It seemed to do the trick, because he stopped panting after that, though he did start doing cartwheels in his cage trying to escape the air conditioning. For some reason, the wind is fine, but any machine-made breeze is witchcraft and must be avoided at all costs.

The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful, bar the four flocks of sheep we came across while driving through the Paraparas. Tonka was very alarmed at the incessant baa’s, because he could only hear, not see, them.

I’ve already let him out of the house. He’s perfectly happy to go explore and then come back inside. He also, apparently, has a fascination with my bedroom window. This is the second time so far I’ve caught him hanging out it like this.

Cats.

Cam

When I was ten years old we made a few big changes in our lives. Our family moved from Auckland to Tauranga, and we got our first dog. 

Cam used to belong to the people down the street. I used to walk past their house on the way to school and walk up to the fence to see him. My stepbrother would always pat him, but I was usually too afraid, because dogs were scary and Cam was a playful biter. He was still only young.

Nearly 11 years on, it’s the end of the road for Cam. Last time I saw him he seemed normal. Happy, affectionate, a little pushy for attention. Congestive heart failure struck quickly, however.

I received a text from my stepfather today, telling me Cam was sick, and would be getting put down later today. Luckily I happened to be over in Tauranga visiting my boyfriend, so I was able to go over and give the dog one last cuddle.

The change was dramatic. He almost seemed normal at first. He walked up to me and licked my face when I came through the door. His tail wagged a little. But it quickly became apparent how tired he was. Even while he was just lying on the floor, he panted as if he’d been running. His resting heart rate was about twice the speed it should have been. He used to let out a bark whenever we stopped patting him, but he’d given up on that now.

I have a lot of fond memories of Cam. When I was younger we had some family friends come to visit, and one of the boys was playfighting with me. I was screaming, as kids do, and Cam looked at the boy, put his hackles up, and started growling at him until he moved away from me.

Cam used to come over and stick his nose in my face if I cried. I’d pretend to cry sometimes, to see what he’d do. Sure enough, moments after I’d buried my face in my hands, a big, wet dog nose would push its way between my fingers. He was the sweetest, most gentle dog I’ve ever come across.

He once appropriated my little brother’s moonhopper, and thoroughly molested it. He loved that moonhopper, literally. He loved it so much, in fact, that the poor thing eventually popped.

He’s caused his fair share of trouble too, though. We had a quad bike at our old house that he loved to run behind, and he’d get irrationally excited whenever he heard it start up. One day Nana was over to visit, and was standing in the gateway when someone started up the bike. Sam was through that gateway like a shot, and we all got a shock to see Nana lying on the gravel, having been knocked over by an overenthusiastic dog.

Another time one of our rabbits escaped, and Cam rolled her halfway down the driveway with his nose before Mum managed to grab him.

Cam was never the dog I expected to go first. I thought we still had a few good years left in him yet. I just hope where he’s going has all the moonhoppers he could ever hope for.

Good dog.

Nightmare fuel

In this week’s installment of ‘Holy crap what is that thing I think I saw it once in a nightmare’, we bring you the frilled shark. Trust me when I say you have not seen anything this creepy in your lifetime.

The frilled shark is called a “living fossil” because it’s so old and primitive, and very rarely seen. As you can see in that shudder-inducing video, it has a body akin to that of a large eel, and it attacks much in the same way a snake does – by bending back and then lunging forward. This thing pretty much doesn’t even look like a shark, but the Chlamydoselachus anguineus, one of the two remaining species of the Chlamydoselachidae family, most definitely is.

Here’s a fun fact for all my Kiwi followers – this little beauty has been found around New Zealand, though usually it sticks to depths of a couple hundred metres, even being found once as deep as 1,570m.

It’s been suggested that this species of shark – or a relative – could be behind reports of sea serpents back in the day. Growing up to about two metres, it doesn’t seem big enough, but then what do I know about sea serpents? Nothing, my friends. I know nothing.

So now that you have the mental image of that thing swim-slithering towards you like a weird, snake-eel-shark hybrid, please enjoy the rest of your day.

The fun part of road trips

Sacha and I had the fun part of our trip today – exploring everywhere on the way home.

I think, scenery-wise, the trip between Hamilton and New Plymouth is my favourite out of all the trips I’ve done around the North Island. The hills are huge, the coast is beautiful, and the black sand and driftwood looks super cool.

As we drove home we saw a sign pointing left that said “White Cliffs Walkway, 11km”.  We figured we had plenty of time and petrol, so we followed the road. Eventually we came out here, and spent the next half hour running around with our cameras taking photos and hoping not to get trapped by the tide.

Our big adventure

My friend and I recently put our hands up to join in on a project that involved travelling to another part of the country for a night and interviewing a doctor. Pretty simple stuff. Our accommodation, petrol, and food is paid for, and once we have the interview out of the way we can spend the rest of our time here chilling out and exploring.

So here we are, living it up in New Plymouth. Well, as much as you can live it up in New Plymouth anyway.

I woke up at quarter to six this morning to make it from Tauranga to Hamilton in time to leave Hamilton for New Plymouth at 7.30. Sacha and I left the house at 7.40, and ended up turning around three times to get something from home. The first time Sacha realised she’d forgotten her laptop. The second time we figured out that neither one of us had brought the important piece of paper telling us about what we were interviewing the doctor about. The third time we decided we wanted to get the cassette thing that lets me plug my ipod into the car. By this point we realised we were actually running well on time and could afford to turn back one more time.

When we reached the hospital we got a little lost, but everything went well once we found our guy. After the interview we set off in search of our hotel.

Now, as we reached the hotel, I started to get a deep feeling of dread in my stomach. It looked like a dump. We pulled into the hotel carpark and I thought to myself “this is the place where dreams go to die”. There was a strong possibility, in my mind, that we would get murdered or abducted as we walked from the carpark to the hotel reception.

When we went inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was nice. It looked classy. We survived the treacherous trek from the car.

So as it turns out, the place isn’t half bad, and we did not, in fact, choose a dud. That being said, here’s the view from our room’s window.

Kitten of mass destruction

My flatmate is away until tomorrow morning, and my boyfriend went back to Tauranga yesterday, so I’m feeling a little bit lonely at the moment. Sure, I have the kitten, but I go through fazes of either loving him or hating him, and he doesn’t really provide any good conversation, so while he helps a little with the loneliness, he doesn’t banish it by any means. 

After watching an episode of Community in which they construct a gigantic blanket fort, I was inspired to build my own in an effort to ward off the boredom brought on by being all by myself. It also gave me something to do that didn’t involve lying in bed on my laptop.

The kitten, of course, as all kittens do, decided that his task of the day must be total destruction of my masterpiece, so a scarce two minutes after I had crawled into the finished product, the roof collapsed in on me.

I should have known better than to try.

Subtle gifts

I came home from work today to find that my grandfather had laid out this somewhat large shirt on my bed.

I’m still trying to figure out what kind of message he was trying to send.

 

I see you judging

It’s late, I’m tired. GIVE ME A BREAK.