Spring weather is here, and with it comes a very active interplay of high and low pressure systems. All sorts of displaced strangeness occurs such as the sounds of songbirds and wild turkeys in the middle of a blizzard, hot sun and yet the existence of snow banks, and this:

It’s a water jug that I filled at home so that I could water the plants at work. It was filled in the morning and looked entirely normal. By the end of the day the high pressure system that had moved in crushed the bottle.

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…

The rain that had been predicted for this weekend held off long enough for the warmer temperatures to offer us an opportunity to do some gardening.

This was the first bit of gardening that we’ve done for the year and it consisted of a clean up of dead leaves and grasses.

Everyone was having a great time (the wine on the windowsill helped):

Until The Girl found this:

After years of little niggly problems costing tons of money to fix and then recurring, I finally had enough. From getting rear-ended the second day after I got the car, to having my emblems stolen, to parts wearing out excessively fast (and only being able to purchase them from a dealership), I said, “enough”.

The recession makes buying something like a new car quite a dream. I chose a sage green 2009 Subaru Forester, traded in the jalopy, switched plates, and won’t look back.

I will not buy another BMW.

As The Vapors sang:

I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so

And…we’re back.

In fact, we’ve been back for a while now, but I just haven’t been able to find the time to be on the Internet as much as usual. This is because of work and dancing, but mostly because of the Dog Whisperer. Cesar Millan has captured our interest to the point where we’ve been working diligently with his techniques and have been achieving amazing results. This all stemmed from a simple question which was posed to us at the Humane Society, “Cattle dogs can be very aggressive. How will you manage her if she becomes increasingly aggressive over time?”. We had no answer of substance. Now we do. More on this in the future.

Our office trip to Punta Cana in the Domincan Republic was loads of fun as we expected. We stayed at the Majestic Colonial resort over there:

The next vacation that The Girl and I will be taking is still in the planning phase, but will be a more adventurous trip somewhere on the continent of my birth. I’m looking forward to that one later this year.