Full Time Job

I don’t want to give anyone the impression that owning birds is all play and no work. I don’t think that I’ve done that, but just in case – I want to make it perfectly clear that it’s a lot of work. We used to say to each other when we were thinking of adding another bird to our family: “Well, what’s one more? “ Let me tell you; it’s another cage to clean, another set of bowls to wash, another set of bowls to fill and another little feathered creature flinging food like there’s no tomorrow! Vacuming is a futile chore, ten minutes after it’s done there’s always something back on the floor. One of our birds delights in watching me vacume around his cage, and then he’ll throw something out to watch me do it again.

The amount of dried on food that I have to clean off the walls is amazing. When the birds were in the living room I literally washed the paint right off the walls – now the walls of the bird room are covered with washable paneling, but I still have to wash them. Same for the cage bars – the birds wipe the food from their beaks onto the bars. Then there’s the bottom grate (to keep the birds separated from the dirty newspaper); dried bird poop is like cement. The powder coated cages are easier to clean than the older style gold ones (which is why we switched), but it’s still a chore.

We have seven cages to clean. Luckily four out of the seven birds have little or no interest in chewing paper, which allows us to either put the papers on top of the grate or eliminate it completely, depending on the cage style. The other three birds are obsessed with the paper and can’t leave it alone. We wipe the grates every night before covering the birds. It takes a half an hour at the very least from the time we start until we shut off the lights. The routine includes removing the soiled papers, replacing them with fresh paper, cleaning up the poop from the cage aprons or the floor or where ever it happened to land while they were on the cage top play area, getting fresh water and cleaning only three out of seven cage grates. It took much longer before we tried removing the grates.

Then there’s the weekly cage cleaning. It takes an entire afternoon to completely wipe every inch of each cage. I take out the bottom tray along with the grate, give them a thorough cleaning and add a huge stack of fresh papers to the tray. If I’m changing the toys in the cages it takes another day to remove the dirty toys, replace them with clean ones, then clean the dirty ones and store them for the next change. If we had one bird these chores would be much easier, but multiplied by seven it becomes work. But it’s work that I enjoy, believe it or not. The birds come out of their cages while I’m cleaning and we dance and sing to the radio and just generally have a grand old time.

I wouldn’t give up any of my birds, but after reading The Parrot Who Owns Me by Joanna Burger, I realized how wonderful it could be to have just one bird. The relationship that she has with her male red lored Amazon is truly amazing – I couldn’t help but wish I had just one because it gives you the time to form that kind of relationship. Then I came back to reality and realized I could never choose. Even the author has another bird that lives at her office!

Cathy