critters

I think I must be some sort of deformed "Chick Magnet". I was walking a dog yesterday afternoon (that's my job) and noticed a man casually chasing a weiro around in circles at a park. When the bird flew over to a tree near me and the man gave up on it, I realised it wasn't his pet. I went to investigate and found the bird tame enough for me to get my hand within about 15cm of it; any closer and it would flutter another few meters. I wasn't quite sure what to do until the resident park magpies showed up and I quickly realised if I didn't do *something* the poor thing wasn't going to last long. So off came my jumper and I netted the poor frightened, stressed thing in about two goes (and was then informed that various people had been attempting to catch it for quite a while, all of whom managed to disappear when the question came up about what to do with it. So now my poor budgies have been crammed into a teeny tiny cage to let this weiro have free range of the big one. He's clearly an escaped pet because he's made himself right at home playing with the toys and eating the cuttlefish that Prince had been ignoring. Now for the fun game of hoping his owner gives me a call... otherwise I might be too tempted to keep him

Hi, I'm Megan, and I'm an addict. I've had a vast number of animals over the years. When I was a kid I lived on a 6 acre hobby farm of sorts in Serpentine (about an hour south of Perth) so had plenty of room to keep them: Dogs, cats, chooks and ducks (at least 100 total at some point), rats, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, kangaroos and a possum. The first budgie I had was older than me, a friendly green boy named Barry. Unfortunately it turns out possums are pretty good at opening budgie cages, and are not vegetarian Later we got an aviary with a population of budgies in it (I think between 10 and 20), though they were more "pretty-looking noisy things" than tame pets, and I never really clicked with them. I now live in a share house with 3 cats (one mine, one my sister's, and one effectively dumped on us by an ex-housemate, but we wouldn't complain!), a bunch of mice (I breed them, though there is very little mouse fancying in WA so it's a limited hobby) and a tank of fish. I also have a dog (pittbull x rotty) who lives with my parents (mum wouldn't let him go. Also he's quite likely to eat people). Well, that was the situation up until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided I wanted a bird and fell in love with a black eyed white boy budgie in a pet shop (I believe he is double spangled blue), named Prince. He is very pretty but as you'd expect from a pet shop bird not very friendly (yet), and he was getting pretty lonely and depressed without the company of other birds (or a human he likes). So then I sought out Libby who today handed me a gorgeous creamino hen who still has a week or two of hand feeding to go (and who also pointed me in the direction of this forum). I haven't yet come up with a name for my new girl yet... have sort of been considering Ruby but it's not particularly original, is it A couple of days after I got Prince I was at City Farmers picking up some toys for him, when I noticed they had baby chickens, which I had been considering getting for some time now. So I also have added three guaranteed-hen layers to my household (did I tell you I was an addict?) named Russel, George and Stephen (yep, that's the ironic expectation that 3 99.5% guaranteed hens will still turn out roosters ) I doubt I'll have time to be particularly active on these forums (at least until my honours thesis is in, hmmm) but I'll no doubt be in touch whenever I need help I have a pretty good grasp on genetics in general (mostly from my mouse breeding) and have had a quick look at budgie genetics, and it looks pretty interesting so I'll no doubt pay attention and join in with discussions about that, not that I have intentions of breeding my birds (well, not for a fair while, especially since they're bubs; I may decide to one day when they're older, or end up with aviaries full of them...). I'm sure you've all been waiting for the pics! Here's my Princey-boy: You'll have to wait for me to take some pics of my new girl (or maybe Libby has some to share) and just because, here are my chicks when they were brand new: