I found this unbelievable ad on “Youtube.” I was surprised because I thought I’d seen most of the ads out there employing birds in their work, but this one is clever and stupid at the same time. It’s for a company called “White Smoke” which as far as I can ascertain, is a company that designs computer language translations.

In any event, I thought it was well done and clever:

Mattie and me at the Petco Festival

I’m back. Back to the blog once again! My apologies for having left it untouched for so long, but I had a lot of catching up to do. As you might recall, I spent three weeks working at the Cincinnati Zoo. (Here is their Kookaburra):

While I was gone, I had some renovations done to my Condo: I had that heinous popcorn junk scraped off the ceiling, and I had a slate tile floor put in. This is the tile. (It’s not my place. My slate is on the floor, but this is the stuff:

In order to accomplish this, I had to remove most of the furniture and store it in a POD. A little about PODS: They are wonderful!

It was a great customer experience for me and they actually did everything they said they were going to do. Loved it!

But the floor took a little bit longer than expected. In other words, when I got back, it wasn’t done, and I didn’t really have a working kitchen. Or a working bathroom. Or a working T.V.  I resigned myself to the fact that I would be living on a mattress on my bedroom floor with a chair. Oh and did I mention it was kind of dirty in there? I would go to work and joke that I’d wake up looking like a coal miner:

I didn’t look this bad, but it was pretty grungy in there. I took a shower every day at my neighbor Tamara’s place next door. In the middle of all of this, I had to fly to Long Island for the Long Island Parrot Society Expo to give a presentation:

http://www.liparrotsociety.org/parrotexpo.htm

I then pitched in to help by sealing the tile. This involved crawling around on my hands and knees with tile sealer and a sponge and wiping the sealer over the tile. After a few days of this, I was a wreck. With some help, I got the POD back and we moved everything back into my Condo. My friend Jean and I spent three days cleaning EVERYTHING: the floors, walls, wiping down the furniture; Yeckkk, what a grimy mess. Things are better now and back in place. And I just love my new floor.

And now I’m back. I still have a fairly full schedule: I have to hit the Rocky Mountain Society of Aviculture Expo on the Weekend of the 14th of November. I’m doing a presentation for them:

http://www.rmsabirds.com/

Oh, and did I mention that I’m flying a 90 hour month this month? That’s about 20 hours or four extra days of overtime. I’m also messing around with experimenting with drying vegetables in my oven. The dried sweet potato is killer! The birds seem to like it and even Mattie the dog is crunching away at them. I also have to get my rear in gear and start working on a few of my feather scarves. I’m planning on going to the Houston Parrot Festival in January:

http://www.parrotfestival.org/festivalinfo.html

I always make one to wear and then donate it for auction, so I have to get busy and begin gluing my fingers together again:

Jill Bell and I at the Houston Parrot Festival

So, I’ve been a tad busy with everything going on in my life. It usually goes like this in the fall. The same thing happened to me last year; I got back from the zoo and all hell breaks loose. I do have a some posts in mind, so I’ll try and be a bit more timely again. Thanks for your patience. In the meantime, I’m going to go scrub the parrot poop off of my new floor. Some things never change I guess.

I happened to be walking by the Andean Condor enclosure and saw this. According to Steve, this male Condor is most likely engaging in “Thermoregulation.” He’s regulating his body temperature by spreading his wings out in the sun:

In the wild, animals are constantly interacting with plants, shrubs, trees and foliage. It is not only nourishment, but for fun and enrichment. It is entertainment and stimulation and animals love interacting with it.  At the Cincinnati Zoo, they have an unusual method of storing for the winter when no browse is available on the grounds: A browse roundup. Here is a video of people from all over the zoo: Bird House, Commissary, Nocturnal, Nutrition, Veldt,  even Veterinarians came to the “Round Up” to help pack up browse for the winter:

Karen, Cincinnati Zoo’s long-time Insectarium Keeper, shows me a glimpse of what it’s like to work in Cincinnati Zoo’s Insectarium and straightens up the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach Exhibit:

I shot some footage of the Giraffes waiting to go into their yard, the Elephant House and finally I managed to get Val, the Elephant Keeper doing his”Meet the Keeper ” moment in the Elephant Yard:

I lost the internet connection at the Bird House so I had to bring my laptop over to Dutch, the Internet Tech Guru at the Zoo for a little look-see. My schedule is a little cramped as I am following Steve’s schedule. I’m up at 4:45 a.m. and we’re out the door by 5:30 and at the zoo by about 6:15. I warm up by posting the videos I’ve shot the day before and get them up onto the blog, but without an internet connection, “no can do.” So Dutch straightened my stuff out and while he was straightening things out, I shot him “doing his thing.”

Dutch is an important member of the team here at the Zoo. He is responsible for the “Central Nervous System” of the Cincinnati Zoo and hundreds of people rely on him.

Mel the Emu got a new enclosure to hang out in. The Bird House Staff in collaboration with Wildlife Canyon and “Wings of Wonder” Bird Show Staff helped with Mel’s move. Mel is one big bird!:

Steve and I had some special guests for lunch. After lunch they had the opportunity to feed lunch to the penguins. It was a fun day:

My friends Mike, Hermit and Lana invited me to the Reptile House. Here is my day with them: