spookyhurst

We actually were wondering if a bird's blood rushes to it's head when it hangs upside down for extended periods of time, and if it can have an adverse affect. Whether Nikko simply was asleep (a very deep sleep) or passed out is unknown. This morning, Nikko climbed inside a box and wouldn't come out. It's actually 2 boxes connected together, and the entrance to the one box is within the 2nd box. She was very quiet for a long time, and all the tapping and shaking of the boxes wouldn't stir her. My mom finally had to shake her out when it became obvious she wouldn't come out on her own. I have no idea what has gotten into this bird :dry:. However, once dislodged from her box, she became active and wanted to play and eat. Right now, Nikko is playing in her bucket. She has tossed out all the toys, and is attempting to climb inside. At least she is actively playing and not comatose.

I'll start with Nikko's favorite toys: pinatas and cardboard boxes. She LOVES to chew. Every morning she starts the day with "box time." I put a cardboard box on the kitchen counter, and she climbs in and starts chewing. It only takes a few days before the box is "condemned" and a new one has to come out. Now to show you how crazy my family is, my dad added an addition to Nikko's current ratty looking box tonight. He says the old box is part of a historic district and can't be torn down, so it has to remain and the new box be built onto it. It's a HUD urban renewal project . We suspect that Nikko might have had a meth lab going in the old box, which is why she passed out in her toy bucket today (see my thread on how she gave my parents heart attacks). Anyhoo, we'll see what she thinks about it when she wakes up tomorrow morning .

Nikko has gotten into a kick where she likes to stand beak first inside her toy bucket for extended periods of time. Her little rump sticks straight up in the air and is the only thing visible. Today, my mom decided it had been quite awhile since Nikko had moved, so she called out to her. Nikko didn't respond. She kept calling to her...nothing. She reached out and touched Nikko's foot (she hates her feet being played with, and will usually bite), but it was limp. She started to panic, saying, "Nikko! Nikko! Wake up!", while pulling on her limp legs and toes. At this point, my dad started to panic too, and began banging on Nikko's toys in an attempt to get her to jealously run over to stop him...nothing. Finally, her limp little foot clutched onto the edge of the bucket, but my mom had to turn the bucket upside down to gently plop her back onto a perch. They said she looked kind of dazed . What do you think got into this bird? Has she finally cracked? Here's a picture of what she does. At the time I took this, the bucket was temporarily broken (she chewed through the wood that held the chain), but my dad fixed it this morning. She is actually sideways, but I inverted it so you could see how she normally stands beak down / tail up.

I'm 32 and have never been married, so I'm pretty sure one of those boney women are me .

Okay, here's one for both the women and men: Computer Gender: As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being female (e.g., "Steady as she goes" or "She's listing to starboard, Captain!"). Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males) announced that computers should also be referred to as being female. Their reasons for drawing this conclusion follow: Five reasons to believe computers are female: 1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic. 2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. 3. The message "Bad command or file name" is about as informative as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not going to tell you." 4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval. 5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. However, another group of computer scientists (all female) think that computers should be referred to as if they were male. Their reasons follow: Five reasons to believe computers are male: 1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless. 2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem. 3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model. 4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. 5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the night.

Oh oh, I want to share a "make fun of men" joke too : The patient's family gathered to hear what the specialists had to say. "Things don't look good. The only chance is a brain transplant. This is an experimental procedure. It might work, but the bad news is that brains are very expensive, and you will have to pay the costs yourselves." "Well, how much does a brain cost?" asked the relatives. "For a male brain, $500,000. For a female brain, $200,000." Some of the younger male relatives tried to look shocked, but all the men nodded in understanding, and a few actually smirked. Then the patient's daughter asked, "Why the difference in price between male brains and female brains?" "A standard pricing practice," said the head of the team. "Women's brains have to be marked down because they're used."

Congratulations you two {Communicate-00020110}!

Ick, we had a flour moth infestation about a year ago. It all started with a shipment of food/toys from an online bird store. When I got the box in the mail and opened it, 2 moths flew out. We killed one, but the other got away. The nightmare was about to begin :ohmy:. After about a month, the larvae started showing up in the kitchen. Usually, they were spotted shimmying up the wall or on the ceiling. They were in the pantry too. We couldn't figure out where they were coming from, because we keep everything in sealed containers (the only food items they were able to infest were some ice cream cones and crackers). At one point, we thought they came from a warehouse club because several bottles of Boost had the larvae embedded inside the lids (turns out they must have just crawled in there from the pantry). We must have emptied the pantry a gazillion times over a 3 month period before we found the source. Some of the bags of bird food I had ordered (and which were still unopened) were writhing inside with moths and larvae. There were all sorts of tiny holes in the bags where they had chewed themselves to freedom. It was major yucky :sick:. We threw the bags on the back porch, and the wild birds went nuts for the buggy food, ripping and tearing into the bags to get the tasty mothy morsels. That was pretty much the end of our infestation. It's been a year, but occasionally we'll still find a dead larvae body in the kitchen (like when we changed the batteries on a clock, one was tucked up inside :sick:). So to make a really long story short, we now freeze all bird food for 48 hours before we open it. We also store most of it either in the fridge or freezer, and anything in the pantry is sealed in containers.

I don't know, since Nikko was 4 years old when I adopted her. The sad thing is, she doesn't talk as much as she used to. She used to be quite the chatterbox, but now she usually only says, "Good morning" when she wants up, "Good night" when she wants to go to bed, "Eat your food" when she's hungry, and "Hello" when she wonders where everyone is. She's been this way for several months. I think maybe we're too quiet of a family, so she's quiet too :dry:.

I have a brother who is 5 years older than me, and that's it. We get along well, but are not exactly close due to the fact that he lives in Nebraska and I live in Arizona, and he's married with 3 kids and I'm single and childless. I'd like to be closer to him though, because we share a lot of interests. But on the rare occasion I see him (maybe once a year), the kids pretty much dominate everything so we can't really spend any time together. Kid number three is supposed to be a real terror (many sources have confirmed this), so I'm not exactly looking forward to seeing them this fall .

The eggshell is supposed to be very good for birds, calcium wise, but I haven't fed Nikko any of it myself. I would probably try to smash it up into a powder if I did feed it to her. Nikko also loooovvvveeesss eggs. We call her a little cannibal . I usually give her around a teaspoon or two, although she would probably gorge on a whole egg if I let her.

How cute! It's a good thing you didn't have those pics for the photo contest or Nikko would have lost :side:! The one where Talon has Virginia Avenue in her beak would have been a sure winner .

I like the Sharper Image cleaners because of their lack of filters. You just wipe all the dust off the stainless steel blades, and pop them back in. The HEPA filter air cleaners are supposed to be superior, but you pay out the nose to maintain them. Talon has a special bird air cleaner that she really likes. I think it's an expensive one though. I've considered it myself, because Nikko really puts off the dander. I can't imagine what our house would be like if I didn't bathe her every other day and have an air purifier by her gym and cage.

It varies widely, from 6 months to never. TAGs are more likely to start talking clearly as young as 6 months, while CAGs typically start at 1 year. There are exceptions of course. Freddie still has lots of time to start talking, so don't give up hope. However, don't be disappointed if he isn't a prolific talker either. He will be just as much enjoyment to you even if he never says a single word .

I'm afraid I use the Ionic Breeze from Sharper Image, but they both have ozone guards on them. I got both as refurbished units, so they cost about $150 a piece. Do they ever suck up the dust and dander :ohmy:. I clean them once a week, and the crud rolls off the collection blades! They even pick up those little strands from the downy feathers.

I love Joshua :kiss:! He seems like such a fun silly little bird B).

If Nikko's poo catches on something and doesn't make a satisfying SPLAT, she always looks to see where it went . Yuck!

That happened to Nikko once. Even the liquidy part was bright red :ohmy:. I was quite alarmed, but then I got to thinking that maybe she was eating more red pellets than normal. I picked out all the red pellets from her dish, and her poo went back to normal. Whew! Those birds sure know how to get to us!

:lol: She's been working on that box for about a week now. I think it's about dead. Like Joshua, Nikko has a thing for small dark places. She likes nothing better then to climb into a cupboard, drawer, or box. Only problem is that she won't come back out without a fight {Feel-bad-00020080}.

Nikko is very proud, and wanted to share another picture of her peaking through something:

My mom says it is kind of expensive, and you do need a special place to do it because of all the glass chips flying around. She used to belong to a stain glass club and used their facilities, but doesn't anymore. Which I guess is why my stain glass birdies still aren't done . My dad bought her a grinder and everything so she could finish it, but I guess she's been busy with other stuff.

You soooooo need the R4 Revolution. I'm in the process of doing a review for it for a video game forum I go to, but it's not done yet. However, you can see someone else's review at http://www.emuboards.com/invision/index.php?showtopic=28116. The R4 fits in the slot 2, just like a DS game and you insert a micro SD memory card into it. You don't have to do anything special to your DS hardware, it just works . You load up the memory card with movies, tv shows, music, books, homebrew applications (the comic book reader is at http://gnese.free.fr/NDS/ComicBookDS/?language=en), and...ahem...borrowed roms. You can copy all of your DS games onto a memory card so that you don't have to carry around a bunch of games all the time. There are also emulators you can download for NES, SNES, GB/GBC, Genesis, etc. I bought my R4 at http://www.echostore.com/ $40, but later found it at http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.604 for $31.95 shipped. They've really dropped in price. I recently ordered the EZ Flash V from them for slot 2 so that I can emulate GBA games, plus it's supposed to make the web browser more powerful (haven't tried the browser out yet).

I recently downloaded a neat little homebrew application for my Nintendo DS that let's you read comic books. Does anybody have any suggestions of what I should read? I downloaded 100 Bullets, because it kind of sounded intriguing. I'm also interested in X-Men (I've been playing X-Men Legends II on PS2 lately), but don't have any idea where to start because there are soooooo many storyline branches. Same goes for Spider-Man. So if you have a favorite comic, or have a suggestion as to where to start on any classics, let me know .

My mom's making me a stain glass piece for the window in my closet (don't ask me why my closet has a window in it :dry:). However, I opted for ultra colorful and asked her to do a scarlet macaw with a blue and gold macaw :whistle:.

I went to the Harry Potter party at the bookstore last night. It was okay, but the area where they had the animals was much too small. People (namely kids) kept trying to shove their way to the front (RUDE!!) even though there was clearly no room. The lady in front of me was wearing a big witch hat, which I kept having to try to look around. And people were so dang loud, that you couldn't hear the guy talk about the animals. And people and their dang whiney kids. If your kid is going to whine and cry, get the hell out so the rest of us can hear! Anyhoo, there was an owl, a rat (actually named Scabbers ), a bearded dragon, a white ferret, a king toad that peed all over, a little fox, a tortoise, and a big snake .