Dumpling is in Love

For some strange reason, since we moved Larry into the red room which Ian is using as his office, Dumpling has become absolutely fascinated by him and spends most of her waking hours (which admittedly, isn't many) staring lovingly into his cage. Obviously being Dumpling she 's a little low on the ground, so all that Larry sees is the top of Dumpling's head, but occasionally her nose, which he takes as being fair game and tries to peck. Which given Dumping's, er, slightly stumpy nose is quite a feat.

Not sure what has caused this infatuation. Most of the dogs hang around Larry's cage, as he is quite messy and often stews bits of seed around or even better (if you are a dog), manages to poop outside his cage - but none of them have quite this level of loyalty. Not even Rosie who spent the first 48 hours of Larry coming to live with us, permanently pointing at him. The infatuation may be the smell of his new parrot food, but if it is, she's the only one that's quite so impressed by it.

We've been talking about Larry's living quarters in the next house and thought we'd quite like to build him a voladero. I don't know how this translates, but it's sort of like a flight room. He's so used to his cage though, he may not take to a larger play area. But we'll see....

Fruitful

While Larry, alas, still remains steadfastly opposed to anything fruit based, our diet has definitely become more fruitful since we've been working on Project Get Larry to Eat Fruit. In fact, we had such a plethora of fruity delights clogging up the fridge last week we even had to investigate smoothies. However, when we realized that a smoothie is basically baby food, we went off the idea.

We went asparagus picking yesterday and came back with enough for a good couple of meals. Which is the first time this year. There were lots of small lizards around, I wonder when lizard breeding time is?

Fruitless Endevours

Well, our campaign to encourage Larry to eat his fruit and veg is proving difficult. While our fridge is packed full of fresh delights, our attempts to get Larry to eat them are fruitless. So far he has showed a bit of interest in a stick of celery, but apart from that ignores everything else pretty much only to get over excited by the sound of a sunflower seed coming out of a packet. He has been to the vet every day this week for an injection. We (Ian) could have done it ourselves, however Larry is relatively small and he had to be injected in his chest and we were worried about getting it wrong. Larry turned out to be a good patient and he was seen by a new vet, who may have been a trainee vet, however who knew about parrot care.

We have Larry's new food - and needless to say he is not particularly impressed. But goodness me it smells nice! It smells like fruit of the forest yogurt. The vet told us to only give Larry sunflower seeds in the evening, which is when he is sleepy, on the assumption that he will only eat then if he is hungry. During the day he should be eating his fruit and veg (ha) and special food (double ha).

Today is day 100 of my creative year challenge. Every day (well most) I've done a sketch or something creative that isn't work related. This is my favourite so far:

Eat Your Greens (and Orange, Red, Yellow...)

Larry has been rather subdued over the last few days and we took him to the vet and he is suffering from a vitamin deficiency. This is because he won't eat anything other than sunflower seeds. He used to have mixed food but he only ever ate the sunflower seeds, and we give him carrots, apple etc but he takes a lick (yes, parrots do lick!) and turns his nose up. I read that parrots are supposed to love pomegranates, (so much so that they tell you to put paper behind them as they make such a mess when they ravage the pomegranate because they love it so much), but Larry was completely uninterested.

So he is now having vitamin injections and is supposed to only eat fresh fruit and veg during the day. I can see this turning into a battle of the wills, however he is having vitamin injections now and the vet has ordered some special well balanced food - similar to dry dog food - to stop him from picking what he likes (sunflower seeds) and leaving everything else, so hopefully he'll start to build his strength up again. We just hope he likes the special food. Other than that I think we could consider putting vitamins in his water.

Ian has to take Larry back to the vet today - along with a photo of the huge plates of fresh carrot, apple, banana, kiwi, pear and celery, with Larry steadfastly ignoring his treat, so they can see what we give him

When we went to the vet yesterday, we found that they have moved and are now an 'animal hospital'. They have a lot more facilities and much more space. I just hope their prices don't change accordingly!