Ridiculous Sunday.

7:30 a.m. I head downstairs to feed the birds and give Eloise the Foster Grey her meds. There is a drop of blood on the paper in her cage. I give her the meds, and as I move to pick her up and look for any feathers that might be bleeding, she jumps to the floor. I pick her up. She flaps her wings and splatters blood all over my face, hands, refridgerator, floor, counter... Clearly, the feather has to be pulled. I take her to the bathroom.

I am not great with blood feathers to begin with and Greys are harder and Eloise is a particularly scary case. I call Rich at the Refuge. He is walking out the door to go back to the Pet Expo. I tell him I will give it a try myself.

By the time I get back to the bathroom with the supplies, she has flapped her wings some more and the bathroom looks like someone was murdered. (Have you ever seen the mini-series of Stephen King's It? Think young Bev's bathroom sink.) I stretch out her wing and see a big broken blood feather. And what might be a second. And a third. I call Rich and tell him I will meet him at the Expo.

When I arrive, Rich and Karen take her to the bathroom behind the Refuge booth. I can hear that it isn't pretty. It is more than one feather, and Karen has to hold her for several minutes to get the bleeding to stop. Chuck the dog in the next booth is still there. I talk to his volunteers for a few minutes. It is almost 9:30 before I am satisfied that she is done bleeding and settled down enough to take her home.

I run some errands, including a trip to the Library to pick up some books for my first paper. I still can't believe the Library doesn't open until 1pm on Sundays. Although, budgets being budgets, I suppose I shouldn't complain. Oh! But I will complain about this:

I stopped at Oberweis for a scoop of ice cream while waiting for the Library to open. Oberweis is a dairy that does old fashioned milk in the bottle. It sells to grocery stores and also has ice cream shops. I ordered a small scoop in a cup. $3.28. Is that remotely reasonable? It's good ice cream, but I wouldn't call it spectacular. I should have gone to McD's for a Shamrock Shake.

Anyway, I checked out my books and came home. Eloise didn't eat anything, so I brought her out on a table stand and gave her an almond butter sandwich. And a mini-rice cake. And apple. She ate while I watched Return of the Jedi on Spike TV and did some homework. Kiwi the Grey flitted around, as usual.

Sometime after five we tried a new crock pot recipe. Same as the first couple: it was fine, but for the effort of cooking, it didn't seem worth it. Eloise ate some rice. I gave her the evening meds, and brought the birds back to their cages with some snack. And oh damn, I just realized that it is 9:30 and I haven't "put them to bed" yet.

See ya.