Pets

Pictures available on our SmugMug site.

We had "Burlap the Brat" since she was a couple months old in April of 1995. Our former cat had died in February of that year, just shy of her 17th birthday. I'll look for a picture of Velvet and add it if I find one. Though we got Burlap in April, she was born in February and have given her a birthday of the 1st. She went to Rainbow Bridge on 19 Feb 2014.

The next additions came to us with sadness. They previously belonged to a very good friend, Richard Borup, who died 17 Jan 2004. During the couple years that Richard was waiting for a new liver, he knew that he might not live long enough to get one. Dave would go over every week to bond with Sweet Pea, since Richard wanted Dave to have him if he died. Not entirely sure of Sweet Pea's age but estimate he was born circa 1989 and we arbitrarily gave him a birthday of 1 Feb 1989. In any case, the colors other than green were red on her feet and the back of her crown, and a beautiful blue in her tail feathers, with some blue hues on her chest. Sweet Pea was a Nanday Conure. Richard added cockatiel Tweetie Bird in the spring before his death, shortly after she was born. Tweetie was also giving an arbitrary Feb 1st (2003) birthday and she died 4 Feb 2010. Sweet Pea died 24 Oct 2010.

"Buddy the Budgie" (aka Parakeet) joined us in Jan 2005. Kathryn was working at the home of a client (Gwen), when he landed on Gwen's shoulder in her garden. She would have loved to keep him, but doesn't trust her dogs, so we volunteered to keep him. We did the obligatory search for Buddy's owners, but finally felt confident that he was ours. The vet estimated his age at 7-8 months, so her assigned birthdate is 5 May 2004. She died 21 Aug 2011.

Next bird added to the group was a canary, who we've named Lemon Drop (can you guess he's all yellow?). Lemon was found in by a neighbor in his yard who gave him to us when nobody claimed him. We got him 23 Feb 2009, and the vet estimated him to be 3 months old, so was given an arbitrary birthday of 5 Nov 2008. He died 18 Nov 2012.

Sweet Pea liked to play dental hygienist. Since the dentist wanted a picture, during the picture taking we took a movie clip as well. Buddy hopped up on Dave's shoulder and started picking on Sweet Pea, who was surprisingly indulgent. The mpg movie clip is 9 megabytes. We also have two clips of Buddy as well, one (playing with Dave's finger) is 7 megs, the other (in cage chirping) is 10 megs.

After a time for grieving for Tweetie, Sweet Pea and Buddy, we decided it was time to get another bird. In Nov 2011, we went to the Bird Mart to talk to breeders. We knew we wanted another Conure since we enjoyed Sweet Pea so much. It's a long story how we came to choose Sunny Boy, who is a Golden Conure, the largest of the Cunure breed, and on the endangered species list. Yes, he was legally purchased from a reputable breeder. We picked him up from the breeder on Dec 28th (he was "born" July 15th). With a life expectancy of 30 years, we will have him for a long time. There's a great picture of what he will look like as an adult, after losing most of his green, on Wikipedia.