Resting In Peace near Hector, by the stream that runs behind our house, surrounded by the very Nature that she loved.

She is survived by 1 cat, 2 dogs, 6 fish, 3 parrots, and 2 humans.

7 Months old on April 10, 2010.

Say Hi to Rex and Lady (bet you’ll be able to tell which is which without me giving you any hints).

I’ve always preferred dogs to cats, but some convolutions of the universe knotted together to drop these two into our home: Our neighbour’s cat (a stray who goes to them for bed and breakfast) got knocked up and had some babies; We’ve had a crazy mouse infestation in our walls this year; When we saw these two, we knew they were way too cute for their own good so we decided that we’d better look after them.

They are currently in training. I’m getting them used to flash photography…

Summer has finally arrived here in Cowland. We’re seeing consistently dry, hot weather now and you can see that people out and about are in much happier spirits. Summer is only about a month late.

I’ve been busy trying to stay out of trouble.

So far I’ve succeeded.

Our annual summer party rainfest (it has rained every year except for one that we’ve had the party) went off successfully again — no injuries, one broken fence gate, some assaulted frogs, and 2 overfed dogs.

I’ve been schooled and am schooling.

The latest person to school me was Rudy. I was refreshingly pleased to be given a few insights into his political thought processes. He argued some political points with me on facebook recently, but did so with intelligence and practicality. He’s someone that has made his own political decisions through reason and research rather than as a crowd-following Lemming.

I’m schooling myself in photography, as many of you know. It’s my newest hobby and I’m working my way through a stack of books, from visual composition, to using Adobe Lightroom. Playing with off-camera flash is the coolest thing I’ve come across in a very long time. It’s actually what’s keeping me away from this blog the most. Fragileheart has patiently volunteered her time to a couple of photosessions for me to work on my lighting.

Here’s an example of what off-camera flash can do for you. Take for example a painting that was created with heavy brush strokes or a palate knife. The surface of a painting like this is as important as the image itself. The strokes convey texture, emotion, and movement to the underlying image.

Straight-on, or flat, lighting produces this:

Lighting from the side produces this:

The trade-off (isn’t life full of these) is that the more texture you show, the less saturated your colours become. The trick is finding the right lighting ratio and angles to strike a good balance between colour saturation and texture and thereby do some justice to a piece that will still be best viewed live.

The usual suspect.

My annual summer bloggin’ slow-down is currently in full effect. You might see some stuff on here every now and then but you’ll definitely see more stuff from me on Twitter or Flickr because those are places that I can hit and run.

Summer is just too short here in iglooland to spend it typing my crazy life’s details. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I always return.

Talk to you soon (I hope). I’ve gotta go and chase another visitor away…

The best toys for most animals are those that can be destroyed. For birds, toy destruction is a way to channel aggravation and frustration while in their cage. In a future post I will write about this further with respect to the self-mutilation that birds will do if they have no distraction from boredom and frustration.

Unfortunately, destructible toys cost money. The more destructible the toy, the more the bird enjoys it, and the more often you have to spend money to replace the toy.

Commercial toys are nicer to look at than homemade toys, yet homemade toys can offer hours of entertainment for your pet bird. They don’t care about how a toy looks. All that matters is how easily they can shred, puncture, or fragment it.

I started stringing together toys for our birds years ago out of wood and plastic trinkets that I bought online from a bird store. The idea was to use these components to build your own toys.

I eventually realized that I could get most of the same things from the dollar store or even a hardware store — much cheaper and with many more options.

Here’s my workshop:

And here are some resulting bird toys:

There are bits and pieces of rawhide and wood and rope from other toys that were previously mutilated. I add in telephone books, PVC piping, and pieces of hemlock and cedar from the trees around our place. I’ve used birch to make their perches.

Everything is destructible, everything is fun.

Our birds have the same zest for these toys as my cousins did when they would come over for our family parties and destroy my brother’s toys.

Yeah, you know who you are…